No Wait

I moved to Columbia in 1999 and one of the first lessons I learned was that there was no point in trying to go out to dinner on Friday nights. Everyone in Howard County had the same idea. Local restaurants at the time did not take reservations. If you risked it, you would be on a wait list. Wait, wait, wait. 

Doing this with kids (or in uncomfortable shoes) was a nightmare. Light-up coasters provided no consolation. Staying home was the better option. 

Since then the number and variety of restaurants in our area has increased dramatically. This is a purely anecdotal observation. I cannot quote you exact figures. But I feel like we reached a point where there were enough options to ameliorate the Friday night dilemma.

COVID wreaked havoc on the food service industry everywhere. Some local restaurants weren’t able to overcome the health and financial challenges. All the while, locals were agitating for less restrictions, more restaurants being open, more opportunities for them to “get back to normal.”

This fascination persists. Howard County remains excited about going out to eat and perpetually abuzz with any news of the opening of new restaurants.

I saw this post on the Howard County reddit this week:

How do all these restaurants survive? What's your favorite?

I have been living here for a year now and just flabbergasted by how many chains and restaurants are here and just wonder how they all survive?

My response: 

They don’t all survive, sadly. COVID took a bunch of them. I think we may see another wave of closures due to 1) job loss in the civil service sector and 2) persecution/disappearing of nonwhite restaurant workers. If there are places you love dearly, support them and talk them up!

People who have lost their jobs can’t afford to go out to eat and restaurants whose workers are being kidnapped off the street can’t continue to operate.

The perfect storm, eh?

If the goal is to support local business economies across the country, what is happening now is not it. If the goal is to make the most people suffer, these actions are, as they say, “chef’s kiss.”

What will be the long term impact? 

Village Green/Town² Comments

Reliable Sources

 

It’s the first day of school in the Howard County School system. Though I haven’t been in school for a long time, and my own kids have graduated, there are still some traditions that feel familiar: picking out a first day of school outfit, perhaps, packing a lunch, riding a school bus, gathering on a playground. 

You hope you will have friends. You hope your teacher will like you. You hope that what you will be doing for the next school year is interesting or at least not so hard that you will be miserable. You may be looking forward to gym class more than math class. You may come to school drawn to music and the arts. You may be looking forward to the sweet relief of knowing you will have breakfast and lunch every day.

Some things are very different. The current presidential administration is dismantling the Department of Education. Funding for schools is being withheld, and vital resources being used to manipulate how states  educate their children. Our students are going back to schools which are, at the very least, struggling with a million uncertainties. 

It’s not just uncertainty, it’s fear. Students need adult role models and mentors who accept them and support them. This is more than an issue of emotional wellbeing; it’s deeply connected to academic progress. Now that national government is overtly targeting schools, teachers, and librarians for accepting people and ideas which have now been declared unacceptable - - how will that change the educational environment in schools where, in  addition to being overworked, the adults around them are also afraid? Can fearful adults function confidently as reliable and trustworthy educators?

Another big change is the way that AI and ChatGPT are challenging what it means to learn and create authentically. Young people receive a steady flow of messages online that ChatGPT will make schoolwork easier. Yet those messages don’t include the truth that AI is fallible and routinely turns out answers with errors. They also don’t reveal that using AI instead of reading the book or writing the report shortchanges your brain and compromises your learning. 

You may receive credit for turning in an assignment but you walk away with nothing of lasting benefit for yourself. 

I came away from my years of schooling with the knowledge that it was important to check your work, and equally important to assess the validity of your sources. A report on current events is going to look different if it is based on a tabloid newspaper instead of a fact-checked, well-researched article by a professional journalist, for instance. Examining different sources, comparing information, forming ideas - - and being able to prove what you are putting forward - -  are not just about learning “content.”

All of those are crucial components of developing critical thinking skills. Whether you will eventually be college bound, choose a trade, or work in the service industry, you need critical thinking skills to make good life choices, improve along your career path, and participate in democracy. 

If you want to learn and grow you need reliable sources. By now you know I’m not just talking about The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. If schools are stripped of adequate funding they become unreliable as sources of student support. If teachers are stripped of the autonomy to accept and champion all students they become unreliable as sources of student learning. 

If public school education itself depends on AI/ChatGPT as a content delivery mode then it becomes unreliable as a source for developing critical thinkers and nurturing active participants in a healthy democracy.

None of this is happening by chance.

If you are deeply committed to public education this is a difficult time. The things we believe in, that we have worked towards all our lives, are under attack. We don’t know what that will mean for the future. It’s a horrible image to consider on the first day of school. Yet, it is the truth. 

But it is not the only truth. 

In our schools and in many others across the country there will also be successes, and compassion, and the deep commitment to facilitate, challenge, and inspire. And in many homes parents will provide care, teach empathy, and encourage divergent thinking and intellectual freedom. 

Every success is like a flower pushing its way through the cracks in a sidewalk. The blooming of children will not be stopped, the work of teachers cannot be suppressed, the power of education cannot be quenched.

Celebrate every success. 

Village Green/Town² Comments

The Blaze in the Night

 

First, the good news: the house was unoccupied. You need to know that before I post the photo.

Photo shared on Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services Facebook page

And here’s the post:

Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services:

Yesterday at approximately 10:00 p.m. firefighters responded to the 3100 block of Saint Charles Place, Ellicott City. Units arrived to find heavy fire throughout the structure. The house is located in a wooded area so crews additionally worked to extinguish surrounding trees and brush.                             

The house was unoccupied. There were no reported injuries to firefighters. Crews will remain on scene for an extended time for searches and overhaul.

Fire investigators from the Office of the Fire Marshal have started their investigation into the cause and origin of the fire. We received mutual aid from Baltimore County and Carroll County.

Something about Saint Charles Place rang a bell and I remembered vaguely a house that was for sale years ago. I fell in love with it with the kind of wishful thinking that keeps you from acknowledging that your fantasy house is too large to keep clean. 

Dream Home Ellicott City: Modern Design at 3173 Saint Charles Place, Ellicott City Patch, Brandie Jefferson 

I enjoyed the fantasy of turning it into an arts school and performance space. That’s what imagination is for, after all. I daydreamed, I bought a lottery ticket. Time passed. I forgot all about it.

When I saw the report today I immediately wondered if this was the house. I don’t know. I did some digging around and discovered two things.

1. Most of the houses on Saint Charles Place look nothing like my dream house. I’d love to understand the big picture of how that neighborhood was developed.

2. Saint Charles Place as a residential neighborhood is connected to another fire which occurred in 1911 and did a great deal of damage to St. Charles College, a Roman Catholic seminary. The ruins of that fire are called the Terra Maria Ruins and exist, from what I gather, as a sort of park.

Again, I have no way of knowing if the house in question is the particular one that caught my fancy back in 2013. The news of the fire dredged up those memories and piqued my curiosity once again.

Still, no matter whose house it is, it is sad news. And it looks like a very large fire that took a supplemented force to subdue it. I’m grateful for the work of the firefighters and relieved that no one was in the house.

Village Green/Town² Comments

The Last Saturday

Here we are again. The last Saturday before school starts.
 

Temperatures will be moderate, although humidity will be high and the pollen count is extra high. You can’t have everything, I suppose. Many families will be busy with back to school activities this weekend but there still may be room for a bit of fun around town. 

There are quite a few food-oriented events today: 

Kupcakes & Company in Elkridge is throwing a 15 year birthday celebration.

Celia’s Cuban Cuisine is having a Salsa Bachata Day party, which is just as much about music and dancing as is it about food. 

A Home of Our Own Howard is holding a restaurant day fundraiser at Jason’s to support their programming.

And of course there are the usual Farmers’ Markets in Clarksville and Ellicott City.

Head over to Savage Mill for the Family Plena Workshop  with the amazing folks from Cultura Plenera.

Make some music with the Columbia Pro Cantare at their Summer Sing Along.

Enjoy a program of big band swing music with the Patuxent Jazz Band.

If a movie is more your speed, you can catch The Princess Bride this evening at The Win Bin.

The usual disclaimer: this is only a sampling. Take a look at your Facebook Events section and the Visit Howard County events listing for more. The Baltimore Banner has been running a weekly “what to do this weekend” article for Howard County readers and, over on Instagram, The Columbia Mom has a pretty comprehensive weekend list. 

My listings are notoriously weak on sports, “night life”, and alcohol-centric venues. So…just because you don’t see it here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. On any given weekend there’s just about something for everyone in our community. 

Whether you find that thought exciting or exhausting - - at least it’s available. Opportunities abound.

Village Green/Town² Comments

F ³: Lunch Break Blues

 

Gosh, I’d like to write about something humorous today. 

*****

Wryly humorous: a teacher posted that she would need to take time off to have a filling repaired and that the dental receptionist asked, “can’t you just pop over on your lunch break?” 

If you are a teacher you will feel this viscerally.

*****

Speaking of school lunches, what do you pack for someone who doesn’t have anough time to eat one? I am running out of ideas. 

There is much bemoaning of the tendency of children to be picky eaters. And it’s not wrong. I have eaten lunch daily with hundreds of children and can attest that they can be…particular. But so can adults, although we don’t talk much about that.

So you don’t have time to eat and you are, as an adult, pretty clear on what you do or don’t want to eat. And is is, frankly, limited. Lunch at work is not when you want to be encouraged to try new foods. 

What’s for lunch?

The trend towards grazing has made it easier to pack a variety of small snacks instead of the traditional sandwich. This can be extremely helpful for kids and adults. A little bit of this and that can strike a balance between fun and healthy. 

However, let’s not assume that most of the folks who pack the lunches are the Pinterest/Instagram-certified-type. Luckily most adults are not being judged by their coworkers on the cuteness of their lunch box.

For that matter, many adults I know would be horrified to open their lunch at work to reveal smiley face finger sandwiches, artistically carved veggies and a funfetti squeezy yogurt. Don’t even get me started on cute Happy Notes. My teacher spouse would be mortified.

Actually, I’d be thrilled to get a lunch like this - - at least once - - but that may be because I have never truly reached adulthood. Give me a Happy Note, stickers even. No glitter, please.

I eat lunch alone for the most part these days and I’m not sad about that. I gave at the office. After years and years of eating with students I have had every possible lunchroom experience you can name and am still smarting from the rage of the child who did not get a maraschino cherry in her cup of fruit cocktail. 

I am happy to a pack a lunch for someone else. If only I could find a variety of appealing, affordable items that can and will be consumed easily and are still somehow a healthy part of a balanced diet. 

I read yesterday that good food tastes like love. Everyone needs that, I think. Imagine how much good just that one thing could do for your day. Or someone else’s. 

Ideas? Send them my way.

Village Green/Town² Comments

Normal Folks

I’m sure you are aware by now that there was a shooting in Columbia Tuesday evening, in the Merriweather District. Gun fatalities in our community are frightening and tragic. They also mean big clicks and engagement for local media outlets so they push them over and over into our social media feeds. 

I’ve written about this phenomenon before. I won’t belabor the point.

There’s plenty of talk online about the kinds of places in Howard County which are deemed safe compared to those that are assumed to be unsafe. I can tell you one thing: the place in Howard County where I feel the most unsafe is the comments section of the Howard County Police Department on Facebook. 

One of the responses to the report of Tuesday’s shooting caught my attention.

The past couple of homicides have been at the mall and now in the newest part of Columbia. Normal folks are not safe.

Normal folks are not safe.

Today I’d like to ask a question. Who are normal folks, and why does that matter? Because: it really, really matters.

Probably the defining lie of the current administration in Washington is rooted in this - - that there is such a thing as Normal People and it is Us. And if you aren’t us, you don’t have rights. You aren’t protected under the law, you aren’t included in the law, and your suffering is unimportant. You aren’t a real human because you are not normal. 

Examples of the “not normal” targeted so far include: anyone who is not white, LGBTQIA people, those who were not born here and “look suspicious”, the poor, the homeless, the physically disabled and developmentally/cognitively disabled…

This assumption flies in the face of basic human rights: that all human beings have rights simply by being human. 

Daily we are told by those in power that it doesn’t matter if those people are suffering because we don’t like those people, we don’t care about those people. They are not like us. And this applies to our foreign policy as well. We are told to ignore the targeted slaughter and starvation of children in Palestine because they aren’t the right sort of people to care about.

All that matters is us. White us, selfish us, narrow-minded us, angry and entitled us. 

If we had to call this out every time we saw it we would be very, very busy. It is overwhelming. But the propagation of this falsehood poisons our nation and pollutes our communities. There are not two classes of beings. We are responsible for protecting everyone’s rights.

And that also means prisoners’ rights, immigrants’ rights, and even the rights of people we really, really don’t like.

When there is a shooting in Howard County we should care no matter where it happens or who is harmed. I honestly can’t comprehend the mindset of those who believe that there should be some kind of extra special immunity from harm because they are a card carrying member of the Normal Class. 

Once you accept the drawing of those lines you tend to forget that the people who make them believe they have the ability to change them at will. 

A friend of mine is rereading George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Oh how, I hated that book when we read it in school: the meanness. The injustice. 

That’s probably why it’s time to read it again.

Village Green/Town² Comments 

Has Watermelon Been Cured?

It all started with a watermelon

Well, that’s not exactly true. It started with an email from Cured/18th&21st  announcing their new chef.

Harry Doyle Here - Introducing Chef Christina - And Restaurant Weeks!

Below the information were their Restaurant Week menus. Take a look at the first item.

Starters: Compressed Watermelon. 

Wait, what? Yes, you read that correctly.

COMPRESSED WATERMELON: grilled peaches, burrata, pistachios, blackberry balsamic

Just think for a minute. What would happen if you compressed watermelon? Envision the scenario: take a slice of watermelon (no rind) and put weight on it. Press hard. Get the picture?

Squish! You now have watermelon juice. And a mess. This seems like it would be a great sensory activity for preschoolers.

But this is clearly not meant to be a beverage. That would be Watermelon Squash.

I did some research and it turns out that compressed watermelon is a thing. A culinary thing. It is achieved by placing the fruit in a special plastic envelope and hooking it up to a vacuum seal device. By removing the air you somehow intensify the flavor of the watermelon.

But you don’t have to take my word for it: you can, with the proper equipment, “take an ordinary watermelon to another level.”

How to Make Compressed Watermelon, Salt, Butter, Smoke website.

Friends, if you wanted to take an ordinary watermelon to another level you could also bring it along on an airplane ride or even down to the basement.

But this is the world of fine dining. This is culinary art. Think marinating, macerating, flambé, brûlée, sous vide. So, who am I to laugh at a compressed watermelon?

In fact, it turns out that I can’t even complain that this is some newfangled idea. I can find references to compressed watermelon going back more than ten years. (Clearly I am not up to date on the latest gastronomic trends.)

It just so happens that I adore watermelon. I consider it to be the perfect food. I don’t really understand why anyone would think it needs tweaking. On the other hand, I didn’t know until I visited my sister in Indiana that you can eat frozen chunks of watermelon and that was a revelation. 

If you should decide to decompress with a visit to Cured/18th & 21st during Restaurant Weeks, let me know if you tried the watermelon.

Village Green/Town² Comments 

The Little Bridge That Couldn’t

  

The pedestrian bridge which arched over Little Patuxent Parkway is gone. One of the chief reasons given for its removal was safety. The bridge was just in terrible shape.  It is being remembered and lamented by some. Its demolition has prompted at least one “Rouse in his grave” comment on social media.

For those who have legitimately fond memories of this pedestrian bridge, I offer my sympathies. As for me: I just don’t get it. 

In all the time I have lived here I have never seen anyone on that bridge. (That doesn’t mean people didn’t use it, of course. I’m simply reporting my personal experience.) Nor have I ever had any reason to use the bridge. 

It didn’t go anywhere I wanted to go. It didn’t connect places that I needed to be. 

Overhead pedestrian walkways were all the rage when this one was built for the New American City. A bunch of them were built as a part of the Baltimore Harbor Place project, possibly by the Rouse Company. Many, if not all, have since been demolished. 

Some thoughts on that: Pedestrian Bridges Make Cities Less Walkable, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

To my mind this particular walkway made no sense. It was intended to support an active, interconnected pedestrian lifestyle, yet what it connected was largely a sea of parking lots on either side of LPP. No amount of aspirational goodwill could overcome the inherent worship of the automobile lifestyle that is baked in to this place.

Rouse rather famously said that “cities can be fun!” but there just wasn’t anything fun (or functional) about this bridge. Perhaps there was a time when there was. I certainly can’t judge what I haven’t seen. It has hung over Little Patuxent Parkway like a monument to Columbia nostalgia for as long as I can remember. 

The most vivid memory I have of that place is one associated with loss of life.  It was hard for me to think of it any other way. I didn’t have nostalgic feelings for that place. If anything, I felt sadness.

Can you think of any place locally where a bridge like that would make sense? Have you ever been on foot, doing fun and interesting things, and thought: what we really need here is an overhead pedestrian walkway? Where would you put one?

Let me know.

Village Green/Town² Comments 

EOS. BTS. SOS.

 

The Back to School Industrial Complex is upon us again. (Sorry.)  Shop for clothes and supplies. Donate so that others will be ready for school. Squeeze in every last minute of fun before the summer is over. Gradually adjust your family’s sleep cycle so that re-entry will not be too painful. 

Tired yet? Feel stressed? 

But wait, there’s more. The Baltimore Sun posted these two items on Facebook in a 24 hour period.

Newly reported cases of COVID up 50 per cent, hospitalizations up 123 per cent. Take your pick. Neither one is promising. I don’t have the local wastewater results, but I will look.

What does this mean for back to school? What do you think?

In the current political environment it has become harder and harder to encourage vaccination or even to get the general public to take COVID seriously. Caring for the wellbeing of others by masking and by staying home while ill is actively mocked. 

We still don’t have any where near enough research on (or successful treatments for) the long term damage of recurrent cases of COVID  and, even if we did, it has become the fashion to discredit and even defund scientific research. 

Welcome to 2025: survival of the fittest. Wait, scratch that. Make that survival of the privileged. You’re on your own, folks. 

And yet we shouldn’t be on our own. We should be caring for ourselves, one another, and our communities. We should care about people who are medically vulnerable. We should think about what will happen to children and young people who are being infected over and over again, K-12. 

While we are at it, we shouldn’t be sacrificing teachers, either. Just saying. 

Those who are vulnerable should die. Those who become disabled no longer have value. That’s what we are being told. 

Are those the values we want to teach our children? 

All in all, the dollars and hours invested in Back to School readiness are just about wasted if we don’t have the basic humanity to care for eachother.

Village Green/Town² Comments

Summer Saturday

 

True confession: as the summer goes on, and it gets hotter and hotter, I have less and less desire to leave the house. Therefore I have less interest in community events. Or in writing about them.  

Sad, but true. I just get cranky. This does not mean that you should be like me. Even if I am likely to be at home enjoying iced coffee and immersed in my art journal you may very well want to get out and enjoy what the community and the season have to offer.

For instance: 

Farmers’ Markets at Clarkville Commons and Old Ellicott City

Building Woodland Fairy Houses 

Demonstrations of Compound Butter and Pesto at Freetown Farm

CA’s Lakefront Live Back to School Bash 

Learning About Archeology 

Movie Night at the Wine Bin, Notting Hill

Grand Opening at JS Brewery (Learn about Korean rice wine)

FYI: some of these events require pre-registration. Click through to learn more.

As far as the weather is concerned, I don’t see any rain in today’s forecast but both pollen and humidity will be high. Yuck.

Perhaps enjoying a meal out is more your speed: check out Howard County’s current Restaurant Week offerings. And don’t forget to check out what’s happening today at your local library. 

Have a wonderful Saturday whether you are out and about or home and chilling out.

Village Green/Town² Comments

F ³: Free Form Folderol

 

Seen on Columbia Reddit…

Any belote players in the area who'd like to meet up and play?

Naturally I assumed that a belote was a musical instrument. It’s not. So then I figured it must be a sport. Nope. 

It’s a card game. 

This struck me as a good example that life is full of reminders that I don’t know everything and that these just might be opportunities to learn something new. 

*****

As a teacher of young children I’ve rarely thrown anything more risky than a bean bag, but this thread on Bluesky made me smile.

Doug Mack: randomly decided to look at the history of people throwing sandwiches and...

Cleveland Press, 1957

“With mustard!”

Mack also writes what he calls an “Agreeably nerdy food history newsletter: snackstack.net” so I suppose that airborne edibles are in his wheelhouse.

*****

I’ve spent the summer falling asleep to the polite, unassuming tones of this fellow on YouTube.

“Hello. Thanks for stopping by.”

Robslondon

An exploration of everything to do with London; from the city's history and transport, to tales of true crime and more…... and every now and then I'll be exploring other parts of the UK too!

No, I don’t listen to the creepy ones before bed. And I can’t explain why I find it so restful. But the two-part series on London’s Quirkiest Railways is oddly comforting. Someone I know has long listened to episodes of The West Wing to get to sleep, so I suspect I’m not the only one to to find that counting sheep takes other forms. 

Do I hate the adverts? Yes. Will I pay to get rid of them? Nah. If I had that kind of extra money I’d donate it to Columbia Community Care.

*****

Yesterday I responded to an NPR story on Facebook and someone immediately lit into me. After my initial discomfort I realized they had misunderstood me. I did my best to rearticulate my point more clearly. You’ll never guess what happened next.

About an hour or so later that person acknowledged they had misunderstood, apologized, and took down their post. 

This is such a rare occurrence I thought I’d memorialize it here. Who knows when it will happen again?

*****

It’s Friday. Do you have any interesting weekend plans? I have not had a single snowball this summer and I’m hoping to rectify that.

Village Green/Town² Comments

Finding the Place

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I continue to find things to learn and to ponder from the Kelly Corrigan Wonders podcast. I had another one of those glimmers yesterday while listening to the most recent episode:  Deep Dive with Jennifer Wallace on Mattering & Making.  Jennifer Wallace is the author of  Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose . She begins her portion of the podcast with the following: 

We need to know our work makes a difference. We need to know we matter.

Mattering I've come to think of like gravity. When we feel it, we feel anchored. We show up to the world in positive ways.

We want to connect. We want to engage. We want to contribute.

Researchers have discovered that there are ingredients to mattering. Things like feeling significant, feeling appreciated, invested in, depended on. What I have seen in the research is that when we are made to feel like we don't matter, we suffer. 

I didn’t listen with the expectation that there would be anything overtly political in the talk Wallace gives - - or in Corrigan’s, which follows - - but as I listened it suddenly felt deeply political to me. 

If you want to seize and keep power, if you want to successfully subjugate large numbers of people, it is necessary to convince them that they don’t matter. Feeling that whatever you do has no meaning and that you as a human being have no valuable impact is the deepest kind of helplessness of all. 

When you look at all the horror and injustice and begin to think, “what’s the use?” then your unique gifts and your power as a human being in the world are being compromised. Weakened. Poisoned. Sapped.

In order to stand up for your beliefs and to take action for the good you have to believe that what you do will matter. Again, from Jennifer Wallace:

Political theorists argue that when people have autonomy and feel like their voice matters at work, that belief inspires people to engage more deeply in their communities, to speak up, and to take action. Simply put, when people feel like they matter at work, they're more likely to believe they matter to the world around them. Mattering is double edged, deeply protective when you feel it, profoundly damaging when you don't.

So beyond building these cultures of mattering, we also need to confront what researchers are calling anti-mattering. Corrosive messages that say, you're invisible, you don't count, you're replaceable. Today, those messages seem to be everywhere.

Finding the place where you matter - - and I mean not just a physical place but also a mental place - - is essential not just to our personal survival but also to the survival of a free society. And it’s exactly what I have been agonizing over, especially since our ceiling fell in and any last tiny shred of being in control of my own world was suddenly upended. 

Listening to Jennifer Wallace set my brain in motion yesterday by affirming the glimmer that it was possible for me to make a difference. If you have time, listen to her talk and also the accompanying one by Kelly Corrigan on Making, which feels equally empowering to me. 

And now, let’s get local.

Columbia Community Care put out a call yesterday. It begins, “We can’t afford to stop.” Reading it reminded me of the power of mutual aid and how essential a component of community building it can be. I’m sharing their request to boost their signal. 

How You Can Help

Columbia Community Care urgently needs:

Financial donations to cover rising operating costs

High-need items: proteins (canned tuna, peanut butter, beans), breakfast cereal, size 5–6 diapers and pull-ups, baby wipes, and period products

Volunteers for deliveries and pantry operations

Advocates and connectors to help find new funding sources

Give Now

A reminder about the concepts of community care and mutual aid:

Mutual aid is an act of solidarity and care between neighbors. It stands in opposition to charity and top-down giving, because it is planned and executed by a community, for a community to not just provide food and essential items but also to educate and organize. “Community Care during COVID”: Oral Histories of Mutual Aid in the Bronx,  BRONX COMMUNITY COLLEGE Archives and Special Collections.

Community is an act of resistance. 

 It’s not them, it’s us. 

Village Green/Town² Comments

A Glimmer

 

I happened upon these words last night on Pinterest of all places. The text is by Loryn Brantz.

In a time of hate

Love is an act of resistance

In a time of fear

Faith is an act of resistance 

In a time of misinformation

Education is an act of resistance 

In a time of poor leadership

Community is an act of resistance

In a time like this

Joy is an act of resistance

Resist. Resist. Resist.

As I wrote in my last post, it’s hard for me to believe that I have anything meaningful to offer as we continue to sink into chaos and cruelty. Brantz’ words sparked something inside me - - a glimmer - - that I might still find a way to be helpful. 

In particular:

In a time of misinformation

Education is an act of resistance 

In a time of poor leadership

Community is an act of resistance

The feedback I received last week made me realize that I’m not alone in asking this question:

What can I do with the abilities that I have to make a meaningful contribution?

Perhaps this is it: supporting community and helping people be better informed by telling the stories of who we are and what we are doing.  

I’m not at all sure that I’m up to the task but I’m going to give it a shot. 

 Village Green/Town² Comments

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

 

Well, we’ve just returned home after living in hotels since June 24th. I can’t say that life is back to normal because we are living in profoundly abnormal times.  We are feeling a sense of relief that the damage to our house has been repaired. Our bedroom has a ceiling. We have a new bed to sleep in. At last I can make iced coffee without getting fully dressed and walking to the ice machine at the end of the hallway 

Our attention now turns to what happens next: real life in all its forms. Catching up on what we have missed. Preparing for things to come. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether this blog should continue or whether it is time to let it go. Honestly, I still don’t know. It isn’t merely the upheaval in my own life that caused me to stop writing. Social media has become much more difficult to navigate and it is harder and harder to sort the wheat from the chaff and find the kind of stories worth sharing here.

A bigger challenge: the overwhelming cruelty on the national stage sickens me. Watching it play out locally as social media trolls laugh at other people’s suffering is crushing. So many people, it seems, were just waiting for an invitation to be hateful. And selfish.

In the face of that it is hard for me to believe that I have anything meaningful to offer. I am not asking for kind words or reassurance. I am not fishing for compliments. Far from it. I want you to know that I find myself at a crossroads. 

I may be able to sleep in my own bed but I don’t think that life will ever be back to normal. So what do I do with the abilities that I have to make a meaningful contribution? 

If you have been wrestling with this question I’d love your feedback. 

Village Green/Town² Comments