Village Green/Town²

  When I learned of the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson a vague memory rose to the surface. I reached out to my sister and brother in law who live in Indiana. She is a special education teacher and advocate, musician, and filmmaker/videographer. He is a Methodist minister (also a musician.) To my sister: Am I hallucinating that you were a big fan of Jesse Jackson especially because of his vision of the Rainbow Coalition?       We voted for him when he ran the first time. That's what I thought.       We went to hear him speak when we were living in Dayton. It was a great experience! Thank you, I've been thinking about writing about him and I thought you had a direct connection.       No more direct connection than that! G. and I saw him at a nice restaurant in Chicago one time. He was waiting for a table just as we were. Thank you! To my brother in law, a retired Methodist minister: Do you all have any memories as Jesse Jackson supporte...

  Friends, I have been trying to act as though everything is going along normally over here but, it isn’t. Someone near and dear to me took a bad fall last Friday night and suffered a pretty serious break to their humerus. A trip to the orthopedist today will let us know how bad. What this means is that I am now living away from home and sleeping on a pull out couch - - one ear always on alert for the sound of the little bell sitting on a bedside table across the hall. This makes blogging a challenge. I am not complaining. Honestly, I am scared out of my mind but I am not complaining. True to form, I’m going to respond to this challenge by putting you to work.  I’m looking for helpful information about home care, what Medicare will pay for, how to organize friendly, helpful neighbors in a way that respects them but is, first and foremost, helpful to the patient. Is there a Maryland help hotline for people like me who are new to being caregivers? And, just to make you laugh, ...

It’s February 17th and a local business is shouting: SUMMER IS PRACTICALLY HERE!!! I look out the window. I disagree. But the business is Maslow’s Loom and they are selling summer camp experiences for school children. I think what they mean to say is, if you haven’t already planned all your kid’s summer camps already, you’re in trouble. Many folks try to get all that squared away in January. It’s February, for Heaven’s sake. Time is running out!  I remember realizing that I would never get to be at home in the summer with my first child. It was a bitter moment. I was divorced. I had to work. Luckily I worked at the school summer camp so we got to be closer together than most. But there was absolutely no choice, no agency in how we spent our summers. On the other hand, my mother was saddled with three children in the summers back in the day as my father headed off to work. No one asked *her* what she’d rather do. I remember an endless string of days filled with outdoor play, running...

I promised myself that, if I got my piece on the Talbott Springs Pool written and posted, I would treat myself to some local pizza from a place I had never tried before. And I did. Last Thursday’s lunch from Pupatella I was driving home from a friend’s house and had the idea. I stopped at the Giant Palace 9 parking lot, perused the menu at nearby Pupatella on my phone, and placed an order. By the time I drove down 108 to the restaurant, my order was just about ready. Wowza. Pupatella has 11 locations in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia. They specialize in authentic Neapolitan pizza. “It’s chewier,” the woman at the restaurant hastened to inform me when I came in to get my order. (I wonder if this means that some folks don’t understand differing styles of pizza and expect it to be something else.) The service was friendly and welcoming and I would definitely feel positive about coming back another day to eat-in. (At an uncrowded time, of course.) I wasn’t there long enough to take in how ...

  The top ten Columbia/HoCo things that make my heart skip a beat: Driving through Oakland Mills in the Spring and Fall when everything is alive with color Concerts at the Chrysalis The library, especially the East Columbia Branch Views of the Lakefront  Pumpkin season at Clark’s Elioak Farm The Farmer’s Market at Clarksville Commons Watching kids sled down the hill in front of our house Ordinary people turning out to support their neighbors  Freetown Farm School communities that help kids thrive Some honorable mentions:  The Holiday Inn in Jessup that rescued us with an allergy-asthma friendly room this summer when I felt like life just couldn’t get worse. Tribos Peri Peri in Ellicott City for being the place where we are always welcomed and appreciated. Folks who provide me with opportunities to learn something new about my community. How about you  - -  what’s on your list? Whatever you decide to do today, I hope you have a little bit of community love t...

 Love hearts. That’s what they are called on an episode of my favorite BBC panel show, “QI.” American research scientist Janelle Shane programmed a similar neural network to read existing slogans on Love Hearts sweets, and the program suggested new slogans: "Loving horn", "Buns, buns, buns" and "All hail the chicken".  We would call them “conversation hearts.” They’re made of sugar, cornstarch, and sentiment, I guess. They are as hard as cement and have no particular flavor. Rather like their sister sweets, Necco Wafers. Now made by Spangler, they’re marketed under the brand name “Sweethearts.” Each year they try to update their sayings a bit to remain relevant to popular culture trends.  To my knowledge, real people make these word choices and not neural networks preloaded with specially curated content. I’m not quite sure how this all works because I think that most of these candies are purchased for kids. How will sentiments like their new theme, “Lo...