Roots

On Saturday a local organization called CARY (Community Allies of Rainbow Youth) released responses to a set of questions they had posed to candidates for the Board of Education. The reaction from the public has been, shall we say, varied. In addition, many people aren’t familiar with the group itself. Before I write about the BOE Survey I want to address what CARY is and where it comes from: a genealogy of sorts.

In the beginning there was PFLAG, whose roots trace back to 1972 and whose first meeting was held in 1973. From their website:

In the next years, through word of mouth and community need, similar groups sprang up around the country, offering "safe havens" and mutual support for parents with gay and lesbian children. 

In Howard County, the first meetings of a group with similar goals were held in 1995. The resultant group became a local chapter of the national PFLAG organization:  PFLAG Howard County. Here is the PFLAG Columbia-Howard County Mission Statement:

To support parents and caregivers of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer children. We welcome all people — gay, straight, bisexual, transgender and queer — as well as their families and friends. Together, we support each other, educate the broader community and advocate for equality.

One of the support groups provided by PFLAG Howard County is Rainbow Youth and Allies.

Rainbow Youth and Allies — a social group for LGBTQ+ youth and their friends, ages 12-22, in a safe space.

The term “Rainbow Youth” clearly connects to international use of the Rainbow Flag which celebrates the LGBTQ+ movement.

Over in the Howard County Schools, all high schools and some middle schools have student-led organizations called GSA’s. GSA used to stand for Gay-Straight Alliance, but, in recent years has come to be Gender Sexuality Alliance or some similar variant, in order to more explicitly welcome trans and gender non-binary students. I was unable to find a link on the HCPSS website which addresses these groups. (Still looking.)

In 2015 the school system created a partnership with PFLAG Howard County. To be honest I have no idea what, if anything, resulted from this, other than a press release.

HoCo Pride is a local 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to provide:

...a collection of events and programs that are geared toward the support of, advocacy for and education about the LGBTQ+ community in Howard County.

The inaugural HoCo Pride was held in Centennial Park in the Summer of 2019. I am guessing that the group’s founding was at least a year before this, as they formulated a core group to plan and fundraise for the event itself.

Onto this scene comes the newest LGBTQ+ advocacy group: CARY. (Community Allies of Rainbow Youth) CARY is a grass-roots, volunteer-based organization, whose first meeting was in March of 2019. Their Facebook page appeared in January of 2020. While their goals are wholly compatible with those of PFLAG Howard County, they are a completely independent entity. From their website:

We advocate for LGBTQ+ youth, raise awareness of LGBTQ+ issues in the community, with a focus on the schools, increase understanding of youth experiences across the LGBTQ+ community, and support each other!

Now we come to the political part. PGLAG Howard County holds candidate forums for a number of local raises but they do not endorse.

CARY, a group whose focus is most especially on students, formulated a set of pertinent questions which they posed to this year’s Board of Education candidates. The questions are listed below.

1. Would you support a policy that requires all HCPSS schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and changing facilities based on their identified gender? Please explain your answer.

2. Would you support a policy that requires HCPSS staff and non-official documents to use the name and pronouns that a student requests? Please explain your answer.

3. To what age groups (if any) is it appropriate for teachers and other staff members to disclose to students that they have LGBTQ family members or are involved in a same-sex relationship?

4. Should curriculum be revised to include reference to LGBTQ individuals, including the fact or possibility that the individuals were LGBTQ identified. If yes, what (if any) is the minimum grade level at which these changes should be made? Please explain your answer.

5. Would you like to see LGBTQ themed works of literature, art, and media be introduced into the curriculum, and if yes, what (if any) is the minimum grade level at which this should be done? Please explain your answer.

6. How should the school system provide more education to parents/guardians with regard to understanding and supporting LGBTQ youth? How should HCPSS reach out to parents/guardians who are unsupportive of their children’s LGBTQ identities?

7. What accommodations should be made for transgender students participating in athletics organized by the school system? Which policies should be revised to reflect these accommodations?

8. Should HCPSS make sure schools offer access to LGBTQ student clubs like GSAs to their students? At what levels (High? Middle? Elementary?) should this happen? Please explain your answer.

9. What changes would you like to see made to the way HCPSS handles identification, reporting, interventions, and prevention of bullying?

10. What measures should the school system take to prevent suicide among the student body?

How would you answer these questions? We’ll talk about the candidate’s responses tomorrow.

Lanes and Leadership

I’ve been thinking a lot about the times when then-Council Member and now County Executive Calvin Ball took flak for addressing ways that the current president of the United States could impact our lives here in Howard County. He got a lot of the “stay in your lane” criticism, along with suggestions that his concerns were nothing more than political grandstanding.

It’s pretty clear to me that everything coming out of the White House daily has a direct connection to Dr. Ball’s ability to do his job protecting and supporting the people of Howard County. We can see how that’s an issue not just for the County Executive but also for the Governor Of the State of Maryland. When citizens don’t believe there is a serious health crisis, their subsequent behavior is a risk to themselves and others, and puts an unnecessary strain on an overworked healthcare system. When hospitals can’t get the medical supplies they need to provide adequate care, people die.

I don’t know how anyone could look at the situation we are in right now and say that what the President says and does has nothing to do with our lives in Howard County.

There’s a well known quote from author Maya Angelou:

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

If Ball was weighing the plentiful evidence of what a Donald Trump presidency would look like, that’s not political grandstanding. That’s just good common sense. It’s also a sign of good leadership. You don’t just think about what’s happening right now. You also have to keep your eye on things that might be headed your way.

The current national Covid-19 crisis is a huge example of how what happens in Washington does not stay in Washington. It’s not in a different lane. The lane runs right to us and thousands of other communities all over the country.

Quarantine Cookery

I see you, budding gourmets. I see your photographs of spectacular yeast breads, succulent slow-cooked masterpieces. I don’t know how you happened to enter quarantine with a supply of marinated figs or phyllo pastry.  I felt fortunate that our quarantine found us with with adequate supplies of ketchup and Ranch.

I don’t judge you. But neither can I emulate you.

I have found myself applying the kind of weird creativity to my cooking that was common when I was young and broke: things like adding that last sliced up hot dog to a bowl of ramen noodles. I counted myself quite the chef when I mixed one container of McDonald’s honey mustard with one packet of hot mustard leftover from Chinese takeout. Perfect with chicken tenders or as a dip for hard pretzels!

Last night a friend posted that the leftover bits at the bottom of a bag of kale chips make a great topping for pizza. Another friend is refilling her soy sauce bottle with her stash of soy sauce packets. None of us is down to our last meal. But there’s a kind of frugal ingenuity that kicks in when your trips to the grocery are limited and you are trying to be a good steward of your financial resources during an uncertain time.

My husband brought me an iced coffee but it had been prepared with sugar by mistake. I’m a cream, no sugar sort of person. Did I throw it away? No. I froze it, then threw it in the blender with a scoop of chocolate ice cream I had on hand and enjoyed a fancy frozen coffee drink. I don’t normally have the time or energy to fool with things like that.

Right now time is the biggest asset I’ve got going for me.

How about you? Do you have any quirky Quarantine recipes to share? Any unlikely cupboard combinations you’d like to recommend? What’s your go-to ingredient? Is there one item you wish you had purchased before we all hunkered down that you really miss?

For me that’s got to be hot sauce. We are out and I can’t bring myself to buy it because it isn’t really “essential”.

You hereby invited to share your current gourmet adventures of any variety. If I get enough responses  I will do a follow up post. Here’s where to submit your delicious examples:

https://www.facebook.com/VillageGreenTownSquared/?ref=bookmarks

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.