Village Green/Town²

It’s going to be Spring-like rather than summery today. (I’m cool with that!) The big plus is that it will be sunny throughout, in case you are thinking of enjoying an outdoor event. The big HoCoLocal ‘happening’ today is in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.  The Asian American & Pacific Islander Festival will be from 12 - 4 pm.  Learn more about what will be going on in the Park this afternoon at the FB  event link.  I’m seeing two Farmers Markets: Clarkville Commons and Old Ellicott City. Farmers Market Old Ellicott City If you follow the footy you might want to head over to Sonoma’s at noon for the Champions League Final . The outdoor movie showing at The Wine Bin in Old Ellicott City is “Back to the Future.” Of note but not actually in Columbia/HoCo: The Patuxent Jazz Band has a concert at 3 PM but be aware that it’s at UMBC. Tickets appear to be free although you will be encouraged to make a donation.  Puerto Rico in Maryland Festival at the Sandy...

  Nostalgia. That’s what’s on the menu. Retro Restaurant Revival Craze , Today, May 19, 2026 From a Yum! Brands press release: Across 155 Pizza Hut restaurants in the U.S., guests are rediscovering iconic features from the brand’s earlier years, including red cups, checkered tablecloths, cozy vinyl booths, Tiffany-style lamps, classic arcade games and even the unmistakable red roof design. I don’t have a ton of nostalgia for Pizza Hut, but this advert from Wyndham Hotels set off all kinds of emotional bells and whistles in my psyche. Retro Modern Recharge, Howard Johnson by Wyndham The color palette! The memories! Have they brought back the authentic restaurant experience? (probably not.)  Nostalgia has been on my mind since this turned up on the Doodl app. Draw something you feel nostalgic about. Here was my response. Here is my Cecil the Sea Serpent talking plush toy. You had to pull a string the hear him talk. I kept him until very recently, believe it or not. Cecil had los...

  Back to the drawing board. Sticking this here for context: Sally Brown:Let Them Drown , Village Green/Town², 10/27/2025 The story of The Source is this: There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. - - the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu Let me draw a picture for you. This is why young people in our community are “falling in.” This is the center of the circle. If you don’t address this, nothing is solved. This is why more police at the Mall or more SROs in schools will never be the solution, because they don’t address what’s in the center of the circle. Addressing unmet needs must be proactive as well as reactive. If people are starving, for example, more police and more arrests will not solve the problem that people are stealing bread because they are starving. Look at how this plays out: Unmet needs negatively impact physical, cognitive, and emotional development. That, in turn, impacts...

  Once upon a time, if those stories I’ve read are true, ice cream was an event. You made it, you ate it. It was a big deal. Refrigeration, then freezers - - then home access to the same - - changed the ice cream experience. Folks could now purchase and eat ice cream year round.  When I was little all home ice cream was to be scooped into individual servings and eaten at the kitchen table. Bowl, spoon, napkin. Ice cream cones were a summertime treat. Now it’s not uncommon to enjoy the flavor of your choice right from a pint container while sitting on the couch watch tv/binge watching shows via streaming, etc.  I treated myself to a mint chocolate chip cone from Baskin Robbins this week. When the clerk asked what kind of cone I wanted, I said, “A soft cone.” “We have cake cones or sugar cones.” I guess my cone terminology is off. It was soft cones vs hard cones in Connecticut. My mother always called soft cones “wastebasket cones” but that was a Mom idiosyncrasy, I think....

  I woke up this morning to the news that a local Democratic Central Committee slate has scheduled a meeting on the Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha. There are only two major Muslim religious holidays. They happen every year. Anyone who is regularly scheduling meetings in our community should already have them marked out on their calendar. Acting in ignorance when you are a member of a party that claims to be inclusive of all is not acceptable. Inflexibility in the face of input when you have made such an error is appalling. This is not an innocent mistake or a scheduling conflict. It’s a choice. ***** Yesterday was interesting. I thought I’d be doing a lot more comment section intervention than I ended up needing to do. This is largely because the support for Erika Strauss Chavarria and Columbia Community Care is both broad and deep in the community. For this I am grateful. My daily life right now is not conducive to blog policing. I will be writing a follow-up post. I’ll need a da...

  What makes good journalism? What makes a local blog valuable? What makes a social media post trustworthy? Sources. High quality sources, reliable sources, and a variety of sources that provide perspective and depth. Here is the one source at the heart of a story about The Source. Here she is: active in the community, and not hard to find. Erika Strauss Chavarria, founder and Executive Director of  Columbia Community Care.  Now I’m going to tell you something that will blow your mind: The Sun didn’t interview her for their original article.* The Merriweather Post didn’t reach out to her, either. Why would anyone write a piece about the most aspirational project of Columbia Community Care and not want to talk to the founder and director? Did they think she’s not intelligent enough to know what’s going on with her own project? Did they assume she’s dishonest? A scammer? Did they just decide that she was…irrelevant? Who does that? Could it possibly be someone who has alrea...