Skip to main content

I Don’t Hate It

 




The news this morning is enraging and frightening. I’m writing today not because it doesn’t matter to me but because showing up here has become a promise I keep to myself.  - - jam

*****

I’m having a bit of a problem. The Baltimore Banner has featured another one of those Howard County homes again. You know, the kind that has all the bells and whistles and sits on a massive lot and costs more than a million dollars.

Correction: more than two million dollars.

That’s not the problem. The problem is me. I usually find these luxury real estate offerings ghastly. This one is faintly attractive. I don’t hate it.

This worries me.

For sale: Modern, custom-built home in Clarksville, Jason Freeman, Baltimore Banner



Image from Baltimore Banner real estate article, attributed to Bright MLS

Here are all the deal breakers for me: 

House is too big 
Lot is too big
Location (for me) is terrible
Too expensive, obviously 
Walkability? Zero.

What I like:

  • The kitchen sink faces into the room
  • Architectural detail



The sunroom is pretty nice, too.





Overall it manages to hint at a feeling of homeyness rather than repelling me with an onslaught of conspicuous gaudiness. Well, except for the home chapel.




Easily large enough for prayer services and/or small weddings, the elegant high altar is…a bathtub? (Don’t forget to take a shower on the way in.)

Whoever designed this house must have been playing with some of the same architectural elements that were common in the homes I grew up in. That’s the only reason I can come up with for why it appeals to me at all.

Weird.

I hope someone is very happy there. Well, a bunch of someones. An entire team of happy someones to fill its impressive largeness and maintain its homey vastness.

How I would love to see that yard upgraded with a funfair and some bouncy castles. 


Village Green/Town² Comments 


Comments

  1. Julia A. McCreadyJanuary 3, 2026 at 9:23 AM

    Please do not submit comments here. This function will be disabled shortly. Use the link above instead. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...
1 comment
Read more

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 ...
1 comment
Read more