Skip to main content

This One’s for Mike



Me: It's feeling like a no blog day. I'll keep you posted.

Mike: It's early, don't give up hope.

Thanks, Mike. I needed that.

Mike is, to my knowledge, the only other HoCo Blogger who writes seven days a week. So, if he says that: he knows.

*****

The truth is, I find myself overwhelmed (again) by the general hopelessness of the country. It’s hard to make myself write about interesting local things when a little voice keeps telling me it’s all pointless.

Why go anywhere? Why do anything?

You see my problem.

I also seem to be suffering from a case of the Get Off My Lawn virus, if there is such a thing. And it’s clearly giving me writer’s block to some degree. In order to excorcise it, I’m going to allow myself to rage about one current pet peeve. 

Feel free to push back. Or share one of your own. Here goes:

Having an event? Great! 

Tell me where it is. Don’t make me click to find out. I am not going to invest one scintilla* of effort to head in your direction if you can’t tell me where you are. 

Bonus: tell me when the event is. Don’t make me hunt for that, either.

Based on personal experience, the number of events posted on social media that don’t include location and/or date and tine is increasing. I don’t know why.

I suspect it’s because someone has told them to make people “click to learn more.” I do not want to click these particular announcements to learn more. I want to swat them with a rolled up newspaper.

Am I wrong to demand this information up front? Have I simply become too old to comprehend what’s going on here? If so - - break it to me. I can take it.

There. I feel better now

*****

As a tip of the hat to Mike, here’s a snippet of his post today. 

Believe

June 27, 2026 by Mike Hartley 

What’s something you used to believe as a kid that seems ridiculous now? – An interesting ask from the daily writing prompt.

At a very young age I used to believe that everything was going to be okay. At a very young age I found out that everything wasn’t going to be okay.

I guess that’s been on my mind a lot, too. 



Village Green/Town² Comments



Comments

  1. 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...

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...

Columbia Chance Connection

  Last night, as my husband and I were about to sit down to dinner, our front door swung open and a cheery voice announced, “I’m ba—ack!”  We weren’t expecting anyone. Clearly the only people who’d walk right in to our house would be one of our offspring. I had my reading glasses on so I wasn’t seeing too clearly. It seemed too tall for our youngest, but we knew our eldest was at work. I took off my glasses to see a friendly but confused face scanning our living room. When her gaze landed on us we all had a sudden realization. We didn’t know eachother. “Oh I’m so sorry! I’m in the wrong house! My daughter just moved in and she needed hooks for the kitchen so I ran out to get them.” She waved the package. “All these houses look the same and I don’t know the neighborhood yet. I thought this was my daughter’s house.” We were all getting a bit giggly. “That’s okay. For a quick second we thought you were our daughter,” said my husband. I told her our names and said she should defin...