Village Green/Town²

Everybody smiles for the cameras. A ribbon is cut, the story runs across multiple media outlets. Some people heave a sigh of relief or say, begrudgingly, “It’s about time!”  I am sad.  Columbia police open new satellite office at the Mall in Columbia after fatal shootings, WBAL  TV 11 Our community has been ablaze with hateful and unsubstantiated rumours about a project to create a community center for young people. But everybody smiles about more police at the Mall.  Why?  I’d smile if they were opening a special hub for teens at the Mall. Let me know when they do that. This is how we spend our money. This is how we think we can address complicated problems. What are we calling it these days? Crime prevention? Rapid response? Investment in public safety? Crime prevention is meeting the unmet needs that cause suffering and put people into a continuous cycle of crisis and failure. Rapid response is truly paying attention, in real time, to vulnerable and distres...

Yesterday was a rare, low-humidity day in June - - shocking! I took this as a sign. After several days of false starts I managed to get myself into the car and head over to St. John Baptist Church for early voting. I don’t know if you remember, but there was a bit of an uproar when St. John Baptist built their new church on the corner of Tamar and 175. Some people seemed to suggest that James Rouse had forbidden church buildings as a part of the Columbia Plan. Since then I’ve observed so many ways that this congregation has connected with the community and opened its doors to educate and to serve. I wonder if the naysayers have noticed? A few things. Something yellow caught my eye in the parking lot. What office is the duck running for? I’m serious. That’s a duck. Apparently it’s associated with Linfeng Chen, whose enormous sign you can see in the center of the photo. I don’t know if there are any electioneering rules which expressly forbid duck signs. But what would happen if every c...

 Image you see the following signs. What’s the difference? We probably think of “adult books” as ones containing overtly sexual content. The kind that we generally limit to “special stores” away from children.  Then what’s an adult book fair? A book fair with naughty books? I’ve found myself pondering this as two of our local indie bookstores have hosted adult book fair events: Queen Takes Book, and The Novel Refuge. Despite any initial giggle I might have had, I was pretty sure these were book fairs for adults, not book fairs selling Adult Books. There’s been quite a bit of online discussion in recent years about nostalgic memories of childhood book fairs - - largely the Scholastic ones. For example: Those rosy-hued reminiscences have grown into a full-blown phenomenon. The events in our own community are a part of a national trend. Just one thing, though. I’ve noticed something about the use of the word adult in many of these events. It often means more than simply “adults ...

CELEBRATING OUR CULTURE  CONNECTING OUR COMMUNITY CENTERING OUR STORIES.   Coming up next Saturday - - Howard County’s Juneteenth Community Day & Block Party. Here’s a brief promotional video created by HoCoLocal filmmaker Gavin Lampasone: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZc3yfHRkUK/?igsh=YzcwejdhNHJtdDZp Lampasone is a recent graduate of Atholton High School, where he participated in theatre department productions in all four years in addition to pursuing his love of filmmaking. About the event: Mark your calendars for our Howard County Juneteenth Community Day & Block Party on Saturday, June 20th from 10am-3pm! Register at bit.ly/HoCoJuneteenth26 to receive a full program and make sure you don't miss out on any of the incredible workshops, classes, and activities we'll have on offer. Head to the Lois Wooten Library between 1-3pm to participate in a filmed interview series with filmmaker and recent Howard County high school graduate Gavin Lampasone exploring the richne...

  The Big Thing: Early Voting Do it. The Weird Thing: Best of Howard Voting is live for Best of Howard so I clicked over to vote for Columbia Community Care. Having done that, I went through the rest of the categories and was honestly depressed at how thin the field of nominations is in many of them. Nominations were solicited in…April, maybe? I guess I wasn’t paying attention. It looks like most of us weren’t paying attention, either. The lack of community engagement is very likely a sign of the Baltimore Sun’s declining influence in Columbia/Howard County these days. You just aren’t going to get local buy-in once you’ve lost respect from the community you are meant to be serving. The Reminder Thing:  Youth Thriftfest at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia to support UU Youth service trip. Today, Saturday June 13th from 9 am - 12 pm. Owen Brown Interfaith Center.  The True Confession Thing: Eight years ago I was getting ready to host a dance party at the Chr...

  I walked in the room and noticed a napkin on the desk. I was just about to put it in the wastebasket. I stopped. Something about this particular napkin spoke to me. It bore a message: REMEMBER. Remember what? It reminded me of the time I found that I had written a question mark on a particular day in my calendar but had no recollection of why.  Why??? I never did figure it out. If you found a message that merely said “remember” what would it bring to mind? This feels woefully open-ended to me. The laundry? To buy milk? The phone bill? On the other hand, wouldn’t it be a great clue in a murder mystery - - a puzzling piece of evidence that eventually became the key component in the solution. A slightly rumpled napkin, a smudge of chocolate, perhaps? Would they need to analyze the handwriting? REMEMBER Imagine our ill-fated victim becoming increasingly distressed as a series of napkins appear around his home bearing the ominous message… Yes, I did eventually find out the sig...