A Day That Reveals

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Frederick Douglass, 1852


Today we celebrate our nation's independence. 

How can we celebrate? 

Yes, all human beings need rest, respite, and recreation, and families, friends, and communities are stronger when we can come together but how can we--no, how dare we--celebrate? All the things we believe to be so uniquely beautiful about our country were built upon a general acceptance of slavery as a way of life, built upon the broken backs and spirits of generations of human beings who had every much a right to be free as my ancestors did.

Our beautiful independence was built upon a crime. A crime for which no punishment has been served, nor reparations made.

Even as literal slavery ceased to be practiced the virtual bonds of slavery have continued in economic and political oppression. A system of criminal justice that sees some as innately criminal responds again and again with violence. The same laws applied differently. The same protections given only to some.

I can't ignore that any longer. I can't look away. Either these precious words are for all or they mean nothing:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thomas Jefferson, 1776

What can we do with our lives to bring those words completely into reality? What action will we take, large or small, to make our nation more worthy of its original promise? 

We want to believe. We want to celebrate. We want this day to be as simple as picnics, parades, and fireworks and a feeling that we are a part of a Big Good Thing.

Then let us truly respect one another and lift each other up--everyone--without exception. Let every human being be truly equal under the law. Let education and health care, housing and employment open doors for all without prejudice. That's what Independence Day should be   about. That's the Big Good Thing, and it isn't easy. 

We have to work for it.

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Summer Sell-Out

The other day I read, with horror, this sentence:

Summer is over on the Fourth of July.

Over? Over? You have got to be kidding me! Summer is just hitting its stride on July Fourth. What killjoy has decided that tomorrow is the end (or the beginning of the end) of the best 104 days of the year?

Retail, maybe?

Later that same day I spied this scene at our local Walgreens and I knew what was afoot. All down the row where, only yesterday, there were sand toys, sunscreen, beach towels, pool floaties and more--now empty. The sign reads "seasonal". On the first of July, when my daughter and I haven't even made it to the pool yet, the summer display has been cleared away.

Later that same day...

My daughter and I looked at eachother. Heaved a sigh of sadness and disbelief. School supplies.  What is it with stores getting people all stirred up with school supplies in the middle of the summer? Why can't they Let Summer Be Summer?

There ought to be a law.

Well, we need to get moving a little faster on our Summer bucket list, I guess. Here's what ours looks like:

Go to the beach

Go to Rooster and Hen

Go to Breezy Willow Country Store

Go to the pool 

Snowballs

Mini golf

Walk around the lake

Cook

Go to library

Moana at Merriweather 

Second Chance (in Baltimore) 

Zoo in Baltimore or D.C. 

Columbia Big Band 

You Pizza, Scoop and Paddle

Craft day

Walk through Blandair

Hang out with friends

We've made some progress, but clearly we need to take this thing a little more seriously. Time's a-wastin'.

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Is It a Party Thing?

We're rolling deep into political season these days. The other day Scott E ran a post about social media use among local candidates. Here's the link on Twitter:

Why Is The Howard County Republican Party Anti-Twitter? scotteblog.com/2017/07/01/why… #HoCoGOP #MDPolitics #HoCoPolitics

This gist of it is that all seven of the local Democrats running are using Twitter for outreach and none of the Republicans are. Hmm. Is it a party thing? My immediate thought was that it might be a generational thing. Twitter seems harder to "get" for folks who are older, but I should add that this is a whopping generalization on my part. I also know plenty of younger people who feel "meh" about Twitter.

"I just don't 'get' Twitter. What is it for?"

So, is it a party thing? Is it a conscious, strategic decision to eschew Twitter in favor of other, perhaps more traditional, forms of outreach? Or is it simply the shrug of candidates who, because they don't understand how Twitter works, refuse to challenge their set ways of thinking and learn something new? Or does their gut tell them that the Republican base doesn't use Twitter, so it's a wasted effort?

I really don't know. I must admit, if someone told me I should support my next big venture by mastering Reddit, Tumblr, and Snapchat, I'd probably shrug. Or wince. I haven't gotten there yet,

A footnote to this story. When Scott posted the link to his story on Twitter, he got this pushback from a local Republican:

Because Twitter is an echo chamber with few real people. Facebook is where it is at.

Scott responded:

300+ Million "Active" users on that platform...not just an "echo chamber" if used correctly. Can be an important voter outreach tool.

And this is where it went south:

300 M world wide "active" users, which most likely includes bots. theguardian.com/politics/2017/… An actual study. No wonder you are mocked.

Alrighty, then. If the local Republicans are leaving Twitter alone because it's not really important, at least they've got this guy patrolling it for them in their absence.

What a great way to win friends and influence people.

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To Market, To Market

Have you been to the Breezy Willow Farm Country Market? I finally got around to it this week. It's located in Ellicott City: 9090 Frederick Road. I think there used to be a second hand store in this space. It's across from Rita's and not too far from St. John's Episcopal church, if that helps you get your bearings.

To be completely honest, I stopped in because I hankering for a new flavor of Neat Nick Preserves, having plowed through the Hot Toddy Apple Butter and with the Lady Anne's Rum Punch soon to follow the same fate. And I wasn't disappointed. There were plenty of jars in the Pantry room and even a few displayed right by the checkout. My pick: Maple Cinnamon Blueberry Butter.

But there's more than jam on offer at this store. Look for local meat, cheeses, milk, eggs, bread, produce, and more. I picked up my favorite spread, baba ghanoush, made by Umami in Catonsville. It's a fun little store with just enough variety to make it worth a stop on a regular basis.

A few years ago my daughter and I split a CSA share from Breezy Willow. While we loved everything we got, it was just too much food for us. We were overwhelmed! When I shared this information while I was having my purchases rung up, the proprietor said they had started a new size of share in response to customer requests. In addition to Whole or Half you can get Medium. That's good to know, because we could probably handle that better between our two households.

Two more things before I sign off:

Howard County Summer Theatre is presenting Mary Poppins at Mount Hebron High School, click here for tickets. HoCoMoJo's own Dave Bittner plays Mr. Banks.

Today is the fiftieth birthday of a friend of this blog who also helps to keep me sane: my husband Richard. I could write an entire post about him--and I have--but today I want to celebrate his love of family and music, his joy in living, teaching, and sharing, his delight in laughing and seeing humor, and his helping nature for anyone he comes across in life.

That's truly a lot to celebrate. Happy Birthday, Richard!

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Off the Shelf

Last summer I came across a recipe for a vaguely Moroccan radish and orange salad. I thought, "that sounds good." And then I thought, "no one else at my house will eat this." And that, my friends, was the end of that. But then this summer I came face-to-face with a bunch of radishes at the Oakland Mills Farmer's Market and I felt a glimmer of rebelliousness. And I bought them.

Of course I couldn't find the recipe. I found half a dozen other similar ones. All required that the radishes be thinly sliced. Oh, joy. So I went to the seldom-opened cupboard and hefted out the old Cuisinart.

Indeed it is old. I bought it in 1983 by putting together all the cash gifts from our wedding. It was a hundred dollars, the most expensive thing I had ever purchased. It seemed an outlandish purchase for a newlywed whose husband was still in college and who lived on the second floor of a converted machine shop with a kitchen that didn't even have any counters. 

When I set down the old food processor and wiped it clean of dust I felt a pang of sadness in my heart. After all these years, after every thing that had happened, would it even still work?

It did.

 It sliced the radishes effortlessly and I began to recreate the recipe from memory. Radishes, oranges, olive oil, cayenne, cumin, chili powder, salt, a hint of sugar...I looked at the old Pyrex mixing bowl that I'd bought one year on eBay to remind me of my childhood. The air I was breathing was heavy with memory.

                         

I took a taste, aware that the flavors wouldn't have melded yet. Even so, something wasn't quite right. I added just a bit of apple cider vinegar--better. But something was missing.

    

 Parsley. Didn't some of the recipes I'd consulted have chopped, fresh parsley? Maybe that was what I needed.

                     

I switched blades and pulsed the parsley in short bursts, somehow knowing what to do even though I hadn't done it in years. I thought of gourmet meals in that tiny, four room furnished apartment, and putting up pepper jelly and marmalade and some kind of citrus salsa that was just a little too weird to be credible. That was when I learned you shouldn't scratch your face after you've been seeding hot peppers.

I stood for a moment in my beautiful blue and white kitchen with shiny granite countertops but I didn't feel entirely there. Something about that old food processor had jogged something inside me. Proust had his madeleine; I had my...Cuisinart?

There. Parsley. 

 

That tiny apartment gave way to a bigger one. Gourmet meals and culinary experiments melted away into the love and care for a new baby. The food processor was pushed to the side. A microwave moved in and heated frozen dinners for the tired new parents. It seemed I cooked from scratch less  and less. I was just so tired. And it made so many dishes to wash. We never had a dishwasher.

                                     

I stood there at the sink and felt a rush of grief for everything that was lost: the marriage that was not strong enough to  bear the weight of life's challenges, my unbounded enthusiasm for cooking, a trust in the goodness of the future. So much was lost and I put it away inside my mind like the food processor on the shelf in the cupboard.

The salad ended up surpassing my expectations. Crisp, juicy, tart, spicy, sweet.  Vibrant.  

     

When I was done I started to put the old food processor away and then I stopped and made a place for it on the counter. There's life in the old gal yet. 

*****

This post owes a tip of the hat to the work of local bloggers AnnieRie and Wendy Goldman Scherer.
--jam

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One Source

One source to rule them all, one source to find them, one source to reach them all...

Wait, that's not quite where I meant to go. Let's try that again.

Where do you get your news? Local news, I mean. Newspaper? Television? Radio? Social Media? Web sites?

In the past 24 hours I have seen questions from people about local goings-on of which they had been completely unaware. And it felt to them as though these things had sprung out of nothingness.

When did this happen?
Was it done in secrecy?
Where would I have gone to know about this?

These were all things which, if you were "in the know", well, then, you knew.

• What was the process for choosing the AAC for school redistricting?
• How did the plan for a new courthouse get approved?
• Where can I find a current list of events at the Chyrsyalis?

Those of us who use social media for local news have to work to make sure we are seeing important information on Facebook, as their algorithm doesn't always make it easy to keep up. A weekly newspaper isn't enough. We don't have a television station and I think HCC may have a radio station but I don't know how much they focus on Howard County/Columbia.

If there were a daily newspaper, would we all read it to stay informed? (Yes, I know that's not even remotely a possibility.) I feel as though local news is cut into so many different slices in the world of social media, and you have to go out and hunt for them yourself. And, if you aren't aware of something, you don't know to look for it.

Great. It's like the "Where's Waldo?" Of local news. Except we don't always know what Waldo looks like.

Is it even possible, in 2017, for Columbia/Howard County to have one central source for news? If it were possible, would we want it? Support it?

Getting local news here is like a scavenger hunt. But it's pretty much self-curated, so there are plenty of things you'll miss, even as a diligent hunter and gatherer. What do you think?

Is there a better way?


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Home

We've had a nice little stretch of lovely weather and I've been soaking it up out on our little patio. That's when this happened:

I just sneezed out on the patio and my next door neighbor sad "bless you" and so did the kids playing in their front yard across the way! 

Perhaps the point of this is that my sneezes are alarmingly loud. But that's not what struck me at the time. Sure, I was a bit embarrassed by the stereo response, but it was a sign of something important: neighborhood.

Neighbors.

I live in a community of quadroplexes, which means that houses are connected in groups of four throughout the neighborhood with lots of shared green space. As a child I lived in an assortment of center-hall-Colonials with ample yards, front and back. It's taken me many years to come to terms with my current living arrangement: a big parking lot out front, tiny yards, shared walls with other residents.

But over time I have come to love our little house and the neighborhood it sits in. We know our neighbors. They know us. We keep an eye out for each other. We communicate online if we need something, or if something is amiss.

During the years I have lived in this house I have gone from being a mere resident to someone who is actively involved in community life. That's probably the most important shift of my adulthood. This little neighborhood turned me into a neighbor. And then a Village Board member. And a community activist. And a blogger.

Last night I visited a place which feels to me like another home. The Chrysalis at Merriweather Park in Symphony Woods. When I got involved in supporting the Inner Arbor plan I committed to being a part of a Columbia in a way I never had before. I feel like there's a little bit of my heart and soul there.

It's good to be home.

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