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Under 18 in Columbia/HoCo

  Wait, what? I did a double take when these photos from the Youth Climate Institute account caught my eye on Instagram. You may recall that the Youth Climate Institute is an initiative of the Howard County Conservancy .  The post I came across relates recent activities related to grant support from the Chesapeake Bay Trust. We're so grateful to @chesapeakebaytrust for awarding The Youth Climate Institute a Healthy Environment, Healthy Communities grant to support four Baltimore chapters in the 2025-2026 school year! Thanks to this generous funding, we were able to provide stipends and action project funding to @sparrowspoinths, @watershedpcs, @official_baltimorepoly, and Academy for College and Career Exploration. Together, these four chapters: - Raised an additional $2,000 in grant funding - Installed 16 raised beds - Installed 42 native plants - Collected 45 large bags of litter across several clean-up events throughout Baltimore (estimated 1,000 bs) - Positively impacted ...
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Recent posts

My “Mid” Meanderings

  What does it mean to be “mid”?  Well, you’re in luck. The website for the Today show did an entire article about it in 2024.  What does the slang word ‘mid’ really mean?” , Elise Solé, Today According to Bark.us, a company that decodes teen slang, "mid" is "a term used to describe something that is average, not particularly special, 'middle of the road.'" Why do I have “mid” on the brain? It’s not a word I’ve used in daily conversation, although I did know what it meant. It turned up on a HoCoLocal foodie group yesterday in a way that had all the charm of getting slapped in the face with a wet fish. To paraphrase: This group isn’t giving enough attention to fine dining establishments, especially this new one. The kind of places it focuses on are what I think are cheap eats and thus the group is nothing but… “Mid.” This particular group has its ups and downs. The biggest complaints are generally of the “I had a bad experience” and quite frankly some of thos...
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The Cars Are Back?

  Cars, Cats, & Coffee - - Will the perky alliteration never end? From Luna Cat Collective : Image from Luna Cat Collective social media  A recent  reel from the Instagram of Luna Cat Collective in the Normandy Shopping Center jogged my memory about something and I started digging through old posts. But first, info about the event: lunacatcollective:  Play with cats, enjoy some coffee, appreciate some rides Cars, Cats, Coffee this Sunday, July 26th 12-2pm Discounted Cat Time For Drivers & Bikers Meet at Luna Cat Collective, Park in the JS Taekwondo Lot 8480 Baltimore National Pike, Ste 311, Ellicott City, MD 21043   Hmm…think, think, think.  Isn’t this a Car Meet? Didn’t there used to be a Car Meet in this exact location? Aha! Found it!  Ellicott City Petition  , August 27, 2022 Someone named Vincent Harris had organized regular events called Cars & Boba at the Normandy Shopping Center but for some reason they were asked to leave....
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Keep On Keeping On: Pride in July

  Pride in July? Yes, you can have Pride in July. You can celebrate Pride any time you want.  Howard County supports two major Pride celebrations - - EC Pride in June, and Howard County Pride in October at Merrriweather Park at Symphony Woods. Pride is a refusal to be erased, harassed, and criminalized. Pride celebrates the truth of the human experience in sexual expression and gender diversity.  The way things are these days it’s almost ridiculous to take a day off from supporting and celebrating our LGBTQIA family, friends, and neighbors. Snagged from a from a friend taking the Metro in July… DC Metro Pride Train From Columbia Association, an announcement for tonight’s Lakefront Live: Pride in July is back at the CA Lakefront on Saturday, July 25! Join us for an unforgettable celebration of love, togetherness and community. Come out for: A high-energy dance floor hosted by SADBrunch Dazzling drag performances featuring the fabulous Cake Pop! and local drag royalty burs...
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F ³: Blimped, Again

  The year is 2015. Word gets out: there’s a runaway blimp. It was more or less thought of as a Baltimore Blimp. To be absolutely clear, it was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Military blimp goes AWOL for a joy ride,  Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today This was back when Twitter was really a happening thing. I wish I could recreate fully the explosion of humorous and whimsical runaway blimp posts as they occurred. Baltimore Twitter was in its element.   USA Today even covered the Twitter aspect of the story.  Breakaway blimp thrills Twitter  , Jessica Durando, USA Today  You’ll see that this article is full of blank spaces where tweets are no longer available. This is indicative of all the folks who have since left Twitter and completely deleted their accounts.  There was much gleeful hilarity at the rogue, unmanned sky adventurer. There was also a darker side. What was this thing? It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a blimp. The JLENS Aerostat was a military...
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Five to Survive

  And now for some thanks. Over the last five months I’ve lived away from my Columbia home and found myself here only when caregivers were scheduled. Now that I’m really and truly home I’m thinking about the HoColocal businesses that became a part of my daily routine as I struggled to keep my head above water.  You’ll see that all of these places are geographically centered around my part of town. That makes sense, doesn’t it? When time is short and your ability to make choices is limited, you choose the near and familiar. I couldn’t dilly dally when rush hour traffic awaited me.  A good old HoCo Holler to these folks who’ve been there when I needed them: 7 Eleven, Steven Forest Road  Especially at the beginning, when I was too stressed and tired to even think straight, this was the place I could grab a cold sandwich for dinner on my way back. I had to learn not to always grab chips and cookies every time but this place was a godsend. The folks behind the counter wer...
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Decisions, Decisions

  “Why are Maryland pools so boring?” asked a poster on the Columbia Reddit. Below are images of a typical pool from the Cleveland Ohio area, versus a typical pool from Columbia Maryland. What gives? The poster, relatively new to the area, uses a pool from Rocky River, Ohio to compare to the Clemens Crossing pool in Columbia.  It’s an interesting discussion. I left Cleveland a very long time ago, but I found the Rocky River pool to be nothing like my neighborhood pool in Cleveland Heights. Cumberland Pool was built in 1927 and is still in use. Cumberland Pool, Cleveland Heights As I watched the conversation progress, I had a realization that we were talking about something which was the topic of much conversation in the past.  Do you remember the word Aquaplan? The year was 2011, and CA held a number of community meetings about the future of the pool system. I attended one of them. (Shocking, I know.) There was quite a bit of emotional pushback from these meetings, which ...
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