Village Green/Town²

  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...

You’re invited.  So are your hocolocal friends, neighbors, and coworkers.  All are welcome. The PATH Early Voting Action event is tonight. The theme is: Our Votes, Our Power, Our Values WHO: Howard County residents from across faith, race, socioeconomic                         background, language, and geography Candidates for office. Currently confirmed: County Executive: Vanessa Atterbeary, Bob Cockey, Deb Jung, Liz Walsh County Council: Cat Carter,Linfeng Chen, Kevin Chin, Janssen Evelyn, Arinze Ifekauche, Amir Naviwala, Jessica Nichols, Felita Phillips, Christiana Rigby, Jean Xu Board of Education: Mark Covington, Linda Frascarella, Lanlan Xu State Delegate: Amy Brooks, Pam Guzzone, Abdun Matin, Gabriel Moreno WHEN: Thursday, June 11, 2026 6:00–6:30 pm, followed by voting WHERE: Parking lot of St. John Baptist Church  9055 Tamar Dr, Columbia, MD WHY: to promote voter turnout, educate residents o...

    I have an inordinate fondness for discovering what people think about Columbia/HoCo when I’m on Bluesky. (Same for Twitter, back in the day.) I think it’s good to see things through the eyes of folks with a different perspective. True, it’s not always flattering. But I usually learn something. And sometimes the takes are amusing. Here are a few recent ones: Q: What is the least culturally powerful city where people do the "you're not a real [local]" thing, because New York is very very far from the only one. A: Columbia MD, where all directions are given in terms of a business that closed 30 years ago. ***** The culture of Maryland is a married couple consisting of a doctor who works at a hospital in Baltimore and a lawyer who works in DC, who have 2-3 kids who pass down the same Volvo with each of their college stickers on the rear window, live in Columbia, and shop at Total Wine religiously. ***** [It] depends a lot on where you are in the state. Like, in Howard Co...

  Ready? Let’s get started. Grab a tote bag. You will need: Black light Magnet Tape measure Curious? Then you should take a look at this piece about thrifting tips before you head out to any yard sales this weekend. Why the owners of Twin Thrift Vintage bring a magnet and black light to every yard sale , Megan Knight, WMAR-2 News What I learned from reading this piece is that I am not looking for the same things at yard sales as the owners of Twin Thrift Vintage. No surprise there. Ali and Jordan Virden are professionals. As dealers, they are looking for high quality items to resell. I mostly go to yard sales for fun these days - - without any particular goal in mind. If I spend more than five dollars it’s a big day. When I was teaching I was primarily looking for children’s books and items that could be used in learning activities and dramatic play. Too bad a black light won’t automatically tell you if things like that have been stored in moldy conditions or spent years in rooms f...

  For reasons unknown to me, June 8th is Name Your Poison Day. While making the rounds of the usual “did you know about this holiday?” websites I discovered that no one seems to know the actual origin of the day. That’s odd. How do we know it’s really a holiday if no one can document its origins? Perhaps it’s even a hoax. How would we know? The poison du jour is AI, which is making it harder and harder to do online research or to tell truth from fiction. Examples: Facebook is now flooding my feed with accounts and posts from “Howard County” and “Columbia” but from other states entirely. When I search YouTube for current local stories these days, I routinely get substantial amounts of unrelated junk - - even if I put my search term in quotes.  My realtor’s newsletter just recommended this house to me. See the problem? What AI has meant in my daily life is less accuracy, more difficulty finding what I’m looking for, and an overall degradation in the quality of information. (See ...