December Remix

Friends, I’ve been up since two am and it has done nothing to improve my ability to write. May I present, for your reading pleasure, my thoughts from five years ago as I contemplated the steady stream of holiday events. 

“Mix It Up”, Village Green/Town²,  December 10, 2019

I’m feeling rather topsy turvy this morning as I look through listings of news and local events. Some ideas:

Why don’t we mix things up and have Ugly Gingerbread House contests?

By the same token, let’s have a “bring your own sweater and decorate it for the holidays” events.

How about Breakfast FOR Santa? A community event where folks get together a provide a delicious hot breakfast for all area Santas. Isn’t it time for us to give a little something back to the man in red without asking for anything?

Would a walk-through event with live music ensembles instead of lights work? Maybe not.

Ellicott City has Midnight Madness. Columbia could host Mall Morning Madness, opening at some ungodly hour in the morning for all those crazy early risers. Come in your pajamas! Get a free donut and coffee with your purchase of xx amount from Mall stores!

What with all the focus on STEM these days, perhaps we could have a construct your own Poinsettia Tree challenge.

Do you have any ideas for crazy, mixed up holiday events? I’d love to hear them.

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Today in Local HoCo: Have you visited the Light the World Giving Machines at the Mall yet? They’re there until December 18th. More on them tomorrow.

A Handshake Disagreement

First, the disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I do not play one on tv. No one in my immediate family is in the legal profession. 

Now, the story: Judge throws out ‘bullying’ lawsuit against Howard County schools, former superintendent, Lillian Reed, Baltimore Banner

The complaint filed in January centered on a handshake between Martirano and graduate Rennen Dorsey on the stage of Marriotts Ridge High School’s 2023 commencement ceremony.

Dorsey, who was 17 at the time of the incident, said she declined to shake the Martirano’s hand in an act of solidarity with her father, a longtime administrator who was facing disciplinary action. Martirano allegedly forced her to shake his hand anyway, behaving in a “bullying fashion” on one of the biggest days of the teen’s life, the lawsuit claimed.

This story has perplexed me since the suit was announced.

I was not present when this incident occurred. There may be video footage; I haven’t watched it. At the very least, something happened that the student found upsetting and demeaning. 

What I don’t understand is the use of the term “bullying”, because it would seem to me to be inaccurate in this case. As a teacher and a parent I have become pretty familiar with what does and doesn’t constitute bullying. Here’s a definition I grabbed in a quick Google search.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance and its members have an agreed shared definition of bullying based on research from across the world over the last 30 years:

The repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power. Bullying can be physical, verbal or psychological. It can happen face-to-face or online.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance, UK

For something to be correctly classified as bullying you must have all of the following:

• Repetition 
• Intentional hurting
• Imbalance of power in the relationship

The only one we absolutely know is true is the imbalance of power in the relationship. That’s clear. She was a student, a minor, and he was the superintendent of schools.

Could it be proven that this was “intentional hurting?” I don’t know. The experience was hurtful to the student. That is not the same thing as defining the action as being performed with the intent to hurt.

We absolutely do not have repetition, or, if we do it is not revealed in the Banner article. For it to be bullying it has to be a continued pattern of behavior. I’m not seeing that here. 

Is the law different in this respect? Can you actually file suit for bullying if someone has done one hurtful/objectionable thing? Is another term used in the lawsuit itself? I don’t think an unwanted handshake would qualify as assault, do you?

Here is my non-witness, non-lawyer opinion: clearly the moment meant a lot to Ms.Dorsey. It was her intent to make a small but dramatic gesture in support of her father. In that moment Dr. Martirano could have handled it differently. He could have graciously complied, he could have respected her wishes but made a face or otherwise expressed disappointment. 

He didn’t. Perhaps he, for whatever reason, wasn’t able to cope with the social pressure of being put on the spot in front of a lot of people. I wouldn’t have done what he did but I can’t presume to explain why he did it.

Boy, do I wish he had reached out to her afterwards and apologized for handling it so badly. (I do not know for a fact that he did not, by the way.) Admitting that he could have done a better job respecting her request might have gone a long way in mending that breach.

Again, my understanding of the law here is minimal. My gut tells me that it’s possible to dislike Martirano’s behavior in that moment and yet what actually transpired may not be legally actionable.

What an odd and disappointing postscript on a student’s K-12 years and an educator’s career.

Village Green/Town² Comments 

Side By Side

Juxtaposition is everything. To me, anyway. I’m fascinated by how two seemingly unrelated items turn up side by side on social media and take on a new meaning of their own. Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they make you think.

Here’s one for you from Bluesky. Two posts back to back.

Ellicott City Motel abruptly shutting down, leaving residents without a home, Dennis Valera, CBS News

For sale: Spacious Howard County home with a backyard oasis , Jason Freeman, Baltimore Banner 

Do you see it? 

Do you feel a twinge of irony, or is it some kind of uncomfortable cognitive dissonance?

Some folks in Columbia are fond of harkening back to Jim Rouse’s views on inclusive and affordable housing. However, one would be hard pressed to point to examples where we are living that out today. Plus, it’s important to note that this was not some kind of pledge that Howard County as a whole jumped in to validate and embrace.

They did not. 

And they are not necessarily impressed by suggestions that if you work here you should be able to live here or that our neighborhoods should have room both for the janitor and the executive. 

Exhibit A, this recent declaration on a Hocolocal Facebook group:

The simple fact is that not everyone can (nor should they) afford to live in our community.   That is a GOOD thing...not a bad thing.

And that is how we have people with no place to go being pushed out of less than ideal living situations, existing side by side with “Spacious Howard County home with a backyard oasis.” 5 bedrooms, 3 ½-bathrooms, nearly 5,000 square feet. 

Every local attempt to create affordable housing is met with claims that such projects constitute the biggest threat to our school system and the education of our children. In fact, continuing to reinforce policies that make the rich richer and the poor poorer and then demanding that they be kept as far away from each other as possible is far more detrimental to education and our children’s futures.

Why? Because it reinforces a world where out of sight is out of mind. Where the “haves” feel perfectly comfortable not caring about those other people who can’t find a decent place to live. And their children will grow up just the same, and perpetuate the same notions. And the “have-nots” will grow up just the same, with fewer options and opportunities. 

Who will bridge that gap? I don’t know. We haven’t created a system that will nurture the kind of people who will value those priorities and take those risks. 

Village Green/Town² Comments

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Today in Local HoCo - - another note in support of a HoCo nonprofit! This one is from Laura Crovo of Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center.

There’s also Grassroots, Howard County’s emergency homeless shelter and free 24-hour crisis center. We provided support via more than 100,000 free crisis calls, 988 texts and chats, free urgent mental health and substance use walk in sessions and Mobile Crisis Team responses.

Learn more and donate: Grassroots 

World News Hits Home

With all the disturbing daily news on the home front, and the general American inattention to world news, you might have missed that the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has fallen. In general there has been more up-to-date news available on Bluesky than on traditional U.S. news media.

Here’s a piece from the Guardian to bring you up to date.

Interestingly enough, one of the first references I saw on Facebook acknowledging these momentous events was from a restaurant. 

Koshary Corner, formerly of the Common Kitchen in Clarksville, posted the following to the Howard County Eats Facebook page.

Holding Syria, its people and our beloved Syriana Cafe & Gallery in the light today. 

We’ve been touched by the love and support of this beautiful community before. You guys carried us through tough times but nothing like what the world is like today. 

Kindly asking you to show Syriana and their staff all the kindness, patience and gentleness you can offer. They’re showing up to work and serve with wrenched hearts over the fate of their families and their country. Your love and kindness can definitely make things easier for them. 

Peace and love to ALL

Not too long after came this response from Syriana Café and Gallery:

Thank you very much for the heartwarming message. Our beloved Syria and our suffering region deserves time to heal from the long years of pain. Thanks for all our friends who supported us in these rough times. We pray that love and peace spread in the whole world.

Their words resonate in a way that feels like both an invitation and a prayer.

Your love and kindness can definitely make things easier for them. 

We pray that love and peace spread in the whole world.

Many of us whose ancestors came to this country long ago may not know the specifics of our family’s origin story in the US. The idea of fleeing persecution, the threat of war, or dehumanizing generational poverty may be a far away thought, like something relegated to a textbook page. I think sometimes we lose our empathy for those who are experiencing these things in the here and now. 

That why the message from Iman Moussa of Koshary is so meaningful. Her words are infused with the deep knowing of the immigrant experience. We may watch other people examine their immigrant pasts on “Finding Your Roots”. Ms. Moussa is living her immigrant experience right now, building a successful business and working to create a supportive community in her new country.

So in a moment of profound upheaval - - tentatively joyous but fraught with uncertainty - - one restauranteur reaches out to another and makes those words public in order to include the whole community in her verbal embrance.

It is an invitation and a prayer. If prayer is, as some say, love in action then - - we have been invited. 

Kindly asking you to show Syriana and their staff all the kindness, patience and gentleness you can offer. They’re showing up to work and serve with wrenched hearts over the fate of their families and their country. Your love and kindness can definitely make things easier for them. 

Back in 2021 I wrote about Syriana in “Sharing Stories”.

As I read the BBC piece about a married couple from Syria who have made a home in the United States and joyfully share their culture, I thought about how important it is to learn other people’s stories. Learning other people’s stories can prompt one to engage and enter in to relationships with those one might have avoided or ignored. Enjoying the hospitality at Syriana or engaging in conversation with the merchants at the Common Kitchen are ways we can step over the boundaries that separate us. We begin to become neighbors. 

“Who is my neighbor?” Thank goodness we have Iman Moussa to remind us.

Village Green/Town² Comments

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Koshary Corner: R House, 301 West 29th Street, Baltimore, MD 21211

Syriana Café and Gallery: 8180 Main Street Ellicott City, Maryland 21043

Resourceful and Innovative

If you were intrigued by yesterday’s post the Banner has done a follow up article 

Before the fire, Baltimore’s Camp Small supplied wood for fine furniture and elephant toys, Tim Prudente, Baltimore Banner 

I bet you didn’t know that elephants had toys. Now you do. The article concludes:

Former Baltimore Budget Director Andrew Kleine oversaw the initial loan to Camp Small, and the project still holds a special place for him. He hopes Camp Small will recover and reopen.

“We hear so much about how government is wasteful and incompetent,” he said. “This is a total counterexample of government being resourceful and innovative.”

Resourceful and innovative. For some folks that’s a hard sell. I keep reading online critiques of Howard County spending where anything the writer doesn’t understand is described as a worthless boondoggle. They’d probably feel that way about Camp Small, too. 

They’d be wrong.

Camp Small made me think about Upcycled, founded by Orlando Goncalves and Alfred Striano in 2019.  Their goal? To give single use plastic a long-term purpose. Their work keeps plastic out of landfills and turns it into benches, garden beds, and more. They lead area clean-ups which keep plastic trash from harming wildlife and getting into waterways. In short, they start where we are, address a problem we have, and create meaningful and creative solutions.

Now, Upcycled is an independent nonprofit and they pursue funding in a number of ways including local fundraisers. Have they received funding from Howard County? I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing that they have. Addressing the ever-growing problem of single use plastic is certainly a concern for the community as a whole. Pursuing viable solutions would seem to me to fall under the purview of County Government.

Boondoggle? According to some folks, if it isn’t paving the roads and building schools, it’s a wasteful and pointless use of funds. 

I would beg to differ.

I’m singling out Upcycled here because what they do reminds me of Camp Small. But it is only one of many resourceful and innovative HoCoLocal initiatives that receive some County funding. They exist either to help people, to solve problems, and/or to improve quality of life. All good investments in the grand scheme of things because they are all responding to existing needs. 

Isn’t that what we want our community to do? Shouldn’t government collaborate in this kind of work? While it’s true that government funds are finite and choices on how to use them are complex and challenging, that’s all the more reason to be thoroughly informed about initiatives like these rather than send them all to some kind of dustheap of the things one doesn’t approve of or understand.

Village Green/Town² Comments

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Today in Local HoCo: I received a response to my Giving Tuesday post from Sonia Su of Kits to Heart.

Thanks for doing this! I’d love to see my nonprofit Kits to Heart added! We are based in Clarksville and founded and led by yours truly, a cancer survivor that works diligently to ensure no one has to face cancer alone! We provide free care kits for patients and caregivers and offer virtual art therapy workshops.

Kits to Heart is powered by individual donations. Learn how you can help here. 

F ³: Bigger Than Fireworks

It seems that last night was a night for lighting the lights - - in DC folks gathered near the White House for the National Tree Lighting festivities and in Baltimore they enacted the beloved holiday tradition of lighting up the Washington Monument. 

The event in Baltimore went off with a bit less panache this year as the usual fireworks display was deemed unsafe due to high winds buffeting the region. You may have heard that those same high winds contributed to the spread of a massive fire in Woodberry.

Massive fire rips through wood piles in Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood, shutting down I-83 Cody Boteler and Darreonna Davis, Baltimore Banner 

Fire officials said the blaze was reported as a brush fire on 1900 Brand Ave., though officials are not sure what sparked it initially. The fire was first called in around 5:13 p.m. by a city employee, Marsh said.

It spread to a facility called Camp Small*, an initiative of the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks which exists to recycle wood. What they do there is the good part of the story: 

The Camp Small Zero Waste Initiative is the wood waste collection yard run by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks. The 5 acre site is located in the Jones Falls Valley just north of Cold Spring Lane. Every day, City crews and contractors bring logs, chips, and brush to the site for processing.  In early 2016, the Rec & Parks Forestry Division, in collaboration with the Baltimore Office of Sustainability, began the Camp Small Zero Waste initiative in an effort to sort and distribute the variety of wood products at the site.

The bad part is, of course, that when fire broke out there was just so…much…wood. It didn’t stand a chance against a brush fire and high winds. Do you remember recently when the county issued “no-burn”​directives? It’s precisely this kind of situation they fear.

The folks at Camp Small were featured in Baltimore Magazine in 2023. 

At Camp Small, City Foresters Give Local Trees a Second Life , by Lydia Woolever, Photography by Christopher Myers, Baltimore Magzine, April 2023

One thing that’s clear: this is a place where they love wood. Working with it, saving it from being wasted, finding new uses - - it’s a continuing journey of discovery for them.

“It’s a sea of inspiration,” says Nick Oster, a former woodshop teacher who runs Camp Small with yard master Shaun Preston, gesturing toward the mountain of wood. “We laugh at each other, because each time we saw open a log, we’re like ‘Oh, man! This is the most beautiful!’ With every single one.”

I’m sure that many families were disappointed by the lack of fireworks at the monument lighting last night. It’s hard to miss out on an anticipated tradition. I keep thinking, though, about Mr. Oster and Mr. Preston and what this fire means to them and to their work. This brief video from WJZ gives you a closer look at what they’ve been doing.

I woke up this morning wondering if climate change contributed to last night’s fire. And I wonder what’s next for Camp Small. 

Village Green/Town² Comments 

*Named after a Union Army encampment which was located nearby.

The Dark Underbelly

If you read yesterday’s blog you’ll known that my jumping off point was an article by Christina Tkacik about a rather quirky, colorful man who goes by the name of Lou Catelli. (Real name: William Bauer.) My own focus was not on the man but rather on the process by which a restaurant is permitted to open. 

It’s complicated.

Alas, something else that’s complicated: Mr. Catelli. I happened upon a conversation of Baltimore locals on Bluesky discussing the Banner article. They took a dim view of the fact that the article doesn’t mention Catelli’s personal history. Apparently Baltimore folks in the know are aware of multiple sexual harassment accusations against him. 

It’s clear from the article that we are meant to understand that this fellow is “a character” but…ugh.

I don’t have the background information. I can’t document it. But I still find it distressing. 

Speaking of which…Remember this?

Heroes and Illusions, Village Green/Town², September 20, 2024

All this is to say that there are certain people whose presence in the world makes me feel good and I would like to draw a big circle around them to protect them from this fate. In other words, I am begging the universe that we never find out some horrible scandal about these folks. Is it too much to ask that to have a few wholesome people to believe in and enjoy?

I hereby declare that I never want to learn truly horrible things about the following people:

Mr. Rogers

Jimmy Carter

The guy from We Rate Dogs

The fellow who runs the Muppet History account

Alas, this has not aged well. Over the last week it came to light that Joshua Gillespie, who runs the Muppet History account, had been accused by multiple women of sending sexually harassing /explicit messages (from the Muppet History account.)

Really? Is no one wholesome? Who would hide behind the innate sweetness and innocence of the Muppets while indulging in such creepy behavior?

True Confession: Before any of this news broke I purchased a couple of T-shirts from their online merch shop. They arrived yesterday. I feel like a dope. I’m trying to decide whether to burn them, send them back for a refund, or try to enjoy them for what they are separate from the Muppet History debacle. 

In the meantime I’m looking for some positive stories to wash away all this creepiness. 

Village Green/Town² Comments