Unseasonable Saturday

So far the topic of today’s blog is “You can’t make me.” It’s partly cloudy, the humidity is high, it might rain. Go out there and have fun.

Blah. It’s too hot and damp to feel any inkling of an energetic Fall vibe. Drink all the pumpkin spice you want. You can’t convince me that this is anything more than sad, leftover summer.

With apologies for my bad attitude, I must acknowledge that there are plenty of things to do around town today and I encourage you to get out there and enjoy them. If you are called to do so, that is.

As always, don’t forget the markets at Clarksville Commons and Old Ellicott City. Bonus: check out the TARDIS.

Check out what’s available at Facebook events, Visit Howard County, and The Columbia Mom will apparently send you this information upon request. (Check her Instagram.)

A few things:

1. Does anyone know why Howard County Public Schools host churches? That feels weird to me but I don’t know the history. I wonder if it has anything to do with Rouse’s vision of not including freestanding, single-denomination houses of worship in Columbia.

2. Despite my creative interpretation, Offshore is having a buffet lunch with a DJ, not a Jimmy Buffet lunch. I mean, “DJ Buffet Lunch” - - it’s open to multiple possibilities, right?

Well…no. The singer’s name ends in two t’s and I need more coffee. Please don’t go to Offshore in search of a Cheeseburger in Paradise.

There’s a ton of stuff going on today at Freetown Farm and at the Harriet Tubman Center today. Just think: ten years ago there were no community programs happening in either location. What a transformation.

Over at Second Edition Books they’re hosting a book signing with Derrick Credito. In doing a basic Google search I discovered that Credito is:

a Baltimore-area college English professor.
a suburban dad in Columbia, Maryland writing folk-rock songs with progressive themes.

College professor by day, suburban musician dad by night…see what happens when his two worlds collide!

That might be a good idea for his next novel.

Do you have a particular event today that you’d like to boost? Let me know.

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Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

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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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