Looking Around

I’m feeling a bit house-bound this morning. Here are some views from a 2017 walk I took around Lake Kittamaqundi.

Far better than this, I recommend anything from Ellicott City Pix @ECPix, who has branched out from still photography into video. Here’s a recent visit to the Patapsco River: https://youtu.be/0z4qFJXA-q0

If you like horses you can feast your eyes on daily pix over at the Columbia Horse Center Twitter account. (@ColumbiaHorseC) 

For those of us yearning for some compassionate human connection, I recommend videos made by staff for students from Oakland Mills High School and Homewood. This is love in action.

Oakland Mills

Homewood

Cable TV and Netflix choices make it possible to see the sights around the world and even in magical worlds and galaxies unknown. But sometimes you want to be connected to home.

Enjoy.

High and Dry

David Tufaro would like you to keep his dry cleaner in business.

Here is his letter to the Baltimore Sun this week:

Who would even have thought that your neighborhood dry cleaner would be suffering? Mine is down 70% in business. My advice: While working from home, please dress as though you were going to work.

And remember, you never know when your child, grandchild, or grandparent might be calling on FaceTime. So by all means, wear clothes.

If you don’t know who David Tufaro is, certainly Baltimore readers do. He is a highly successful developer who ran for mayor once. Unsuccessfully. As an extremely well-to-do member of Baltimore’s business elite, his concern about dry cleaners somehow rings a little Marie Antoinette to me. Or maybe more along the lines of Frasier and Niles.

On the other hand, dry cleaners are real people who run small businesses that are probably devastated by this crisis, so perhaps I would do well to focus on them and try to tune out Mr. Tufaro. At the time he wrote the letter, dry cleaners were still operating. Have they been shut down now as non-essential?

I wonder if Mr. Tufaro has a plan to support them.

Before I get too convoluted in my analysis of this letter, there is one last clue available: the date of publication. It ran in the April 1st edition of the Baltimore Sun. Perhaps Mr. Tufaro is just having a good laugh about it all? Hard to say.

How about you? If you are working from home, are you getting dressed in business attire each day? If you are not working, are you getting dressed? No need to send photos. I’ll take your word for it.

Just Breathe

There’s a letter to the editor in today’s Columbia Flier that I hope everyone reads.

State Should Recognize Respiratory Therapists

Written by a local respiratory therapist, the letter explains how crucial this particular specialty is right now during the Covid-19 pandemic. She doesn’t want recognition for herself, but for her colleagues-in-arms, whose work she is championing. It’s true that we read a lot about ventilators but we don’t read about the specifics. There are people behind the machines.

We tend to think of generic medical workers:  doctors and nurses. If we’ve watched hospital shows we might know about cardiologists, pediatric specialists, whoever is featured in a disease of the week episode. Respiratory therapists? Maybe not.

The letter closes:

Most will not know what a respiratory therapist does — until they need one.

Although the author of the letter will very likely never see this, I wish I could tell her (and her husband, also a respiratory therapist) that I already know. My father had COPD, also known as emphysema. In every one of his multiple hospitalizations he was cared for by a team that included respiratory therapists. He was on a ventilator at the end of his life. I am keenly aware of what that entails.

Years ago I had elective surgery and the other person in my hospital room was there because of an auto collision. She hadn’t worn a seat belt and threw herself low so as not to go through the windshield. The impact placed the steering column into her ribcage. I remember the care she received from respiratory therapists to make sure her lungs were functioning appropriately and she was getting a healthy amount of oxygen.

PSA: Always wear your seatbelt.

When my youngest daughter was eighteen months old she was hospitalized for pneumonia at Howard County General. Her oxygen levels were dangerously low and they weren’t able to bring them up sufficiently in the pediatric ER. She spent the second Easter Sunday of her little life in a big oxygen tent. All throughout her stay respiratory therapists were in and out, checking on her, administering and fine-tuning treatments.

Respiratory therapists are amazing, friends.

If, as the author of the letter hopes, Governor Hogan makes a point of recognizing Respiratory Therapists for their work in this crisis, it would be well deserved. Do you know the Governor? Know someone who does? Perhaps you could pass her letter along.

Crowded

There seems to be a consensus that April Fools Day is canceled this year, and for good reason. Instead of tricks I’ll offer you some unthinkables: memories I have of local events that were full of lots and lots of people. We can’t even imagine those right now. I get uncomfortable when I look at snapshots of a few people standing close together. Crowds? The thought makes me shudder.

Readers of this blog know I’m not much of an out and about sort of person, but it turns out I do have some very happy memories that involve, well, being out and about. Here are some of my favorites:

• When the musical group March Fourth came to town to perform at the Lakefront during the Columbia Festival of the Arts Lakefest Weekend
• Paul Simon at Merriweather Post Pavilion
• The Oakland Mills annual Cultural Arts Festival
• The dedication of the refurbished Lakefront Carillon 
• Waiting for the polls to open at Talbott Springs Elementary School on November 4, 2008
• A memorable HoCo Blogs party at The Stained Glass Pub in Elkridge 
• The Columbia 50th Birthday celebration kickoff event at the Mall, when Elijah Cummings spoke
• That one time I got all dressed up and went to Howard County Library’s Evening in the Stacks 
• Peabody Children's Chorus concerts at the Rouse Theatre, Wilde Lake High School 
• Soup ‘r Sundae, both at the old Rouse Company headquarters and at Wilde Lake High School
• Marching with friends at a parade at the Howard County Fair 
• Packed live broadcasts of Elevate Maryland at the Common Kitchen at Clarksville Commons and at Lupa at the Lakefront 
• The dedication of the Chrysalis, also, the delightfully crowded Columbia Orchestra Pops Concerts at the Chrysalis 

I guess I get out more than I thought.

What are your favorite local “peopley” memories? Right now might be a good time to share them.

Discontent Diaries

I’ve seen some folks online express frustration recently by using statements like:

I am so over Howard County.

Or, was it:

I just can’t even with Howard County.

But one comment I spotted, left as a review of a local nonprofit, takes the cake:

They do nothing to help the real housewives of HoCo.

That’s when my whole train of thought went off the rails. Who are the real housewives of HoCo?

True Confession: I have never watched even one moment of any of the “Real Housewives” shows.  I didn’t watch Desperate Housewives either. Perhaps I don’t like the term “Housewife”. I know I cringe when people call the dramatic play area in a classroom “Housekeeping.” (Maybe that’s just me.)

Here is your question of the day, dear readers. Who are the real housewives of HoCo? What qualifies them to be “real” and what constitutes a legitimate “housewife”? The HoCo part is pretty straightforward.

If ”housewife” means not having gainful employment outside the home, I wonder how many of those we have these days. And, of those, do we think any would fit some archetypal “Real Housewives of HoCo” mold? 

There are many ways to be a housewife, even if there aren’t as many of them as there used to be. You could be married but unable to work due to a disability. You could have young children, need work, but your earning potential wouldn’t cover the cost of childcare. Everyone’s picture does not look the same.

Clearly I have way too much time on my hands right now. But I wonder if it’s a mistake to try to define who is real and who isn’t. 

Great Expectations

I’d like to take a moment today to address the role of schools during our pandemic quarantine. There’s a story here, but not the one most people are talking about. So let’s have a little exposition.

Here are some ways that schools have been asked through the years to respond to changing needs and expectations:

In response to:                                                            Schools provide:

None of these are one-and-done additions to the educational mission of our schools. They require time to enact/complete, whether through daily operations, weekly or monthly meetings,  or annual training requirements. Add to this the national focus on high stakes standardized testing and you are adding more work, more forms to fill out, more meetings about data, more evaluations based on testing numbers.

Despite increasing expectations, our schools continue to work to establish community, nurture relationships, create learning experiences that can connect from grade to grade. I don’t think that most people in our community truly understand how much has been required of them. I would ask parents to look at the list above and tell me when schools would have had the time and resources to prepare a program for distance learning that works for all students regardless of family circumstances and educational ability.

I keep reading posts online from angry parents saying, “they should have been ready.” I look at what they are already doing and say, “How?”

Schools have always risen to the challenges that we have put to them. The list above gives you multiple examples. And they are working right now to respond to the present crisis. They are just like us, working hard to do the best they can in an unprecedented situation. Here is a heartfelt statement from a school principal in Minnesota:

I worry that this may come across to some as begrudging the additional work that is done for the care of children. It truly is not. It is asking the community to look plainly at the additional roles that schools have taken on because our society expected them to. Because there appeared to be no other choice. Because no one else stood up.

Perhaps because I am older than many current school parents, I have vivid memories of my mother’s stories about living through World War ll. She told me about how the whole country came together during a time of crisis. She described England during the Blitz, citizens enduring horrific trials but determined that there would “always be an England.” I look at the Covid-19 pandemic like that. It may look different on the surface but it threatens everything around us in a quite similar way.

How can we best respond to the work our school system is doing under such unimaginable conditions? By being partners. By standing up. By bearing the burden together. If you ever wondered how you would have acted during a great national emergency, this is it. Your children and your community need you to step up.

It is time to lay down our great expectations for what schools “should have done” and get to work in partnership with them, with calmer, kinder, more loving hearts.

Behind the Door, Part ll

There’s life in the old gal yet. This gal:

Back about a million years ago, in late February, I wrote about the present state of the Columbia Flier building. (“Behind the Door” “On the Inside”) Not even a month later, the scene is a bit different.

The seasons change even as we stay inside. Spring has arrived and pink petals carpet the sidewalks leading to the doors. 

Something else has changed. The school supplies that Board of Education member Vicky Cutroneo has been gathering there for use in schools have taken on a new purpose. In a quick change of plan, Ms. Cutroneo is getting those materials out to the HCPSS Grab & Go meal sites to support the work of Columbia Community Care.

In addition, Ms. Cutroneo has reached out to friends and neighbors for additional materials to supplement her cache:

Local friends:  Whilst cleaning out and organizing your closets and basements... if you come across board games, educational games, unused coloring books, packs of crayons... 

I am interested.   Please drop off on my porch or I can pick up from your porch.

Here’s what comes next: the materials are quarantined in the Flier building to ensure no living virus is present, then sanitized before distribution to the sites where Columbia Community Care has set up supplemental assistance for families: Swansfield ES, Lake Elkhorn MS/Cradlerock ES, Howard HS, Oakland Mills MS, Wilde Lake MS.

“I dropped off blank journals and a teacher told me they were a huge hit. Kids want to write about stuff and many don’t have the materials to write,” said Cutroneo.

So, even though the Columbia Flier building is doing nothing, it’s helping in its own quirky way. It’s the quarantine site for art materials, school supplies, games, and craft items so that they will be safe to share with those who need them. Of course that takes creative thinking and dedicated effort from Ms. Cutroneo and the generosity and goodwill of community members committed to sharing from whatever abundance they have.

If you want to assist Ms. Cutroneo in her mission I’m guessing you can reach her through her BOE email (vicky_cutroneo@hcpss.org ) to arrange a no-contact porch pickup. 

To support Columbia Community Care through a monetary donation, time and talent, or gifts in kind of food and household necessities, go to the Columbia Community Care Group on Facebook , or reach out to Erika Strauss Chavarria through her HCPSS email: erika_trasschavarria@hcpss.org .