Village Green/Town²

  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...

I believe you know I’m a fan of the unintentional quirkiness of Facebook Marketplace. I often find items which are either puzzling or hilarious. Yesterday, though…there was one offering that made me think of politics.   BRAND NEW - Progressive 3-in-1 Party Carrier Much has been made of the current dearth of Republican candidates in local elections. And some Republicans seem to be dealing with that by running as Democrats, which I find odd and unhelpful. What I find far more troubling is how quickly some local Democrats have descended into the kind of just plain nasty politicking that we’ve normally seen from the opposing party. Is this what happens when the regular competition is out of the picture? You turn on each other? Don’t tell me “it’s just the primary” because in some races the primary will have the final say. (See above.) In my opinion the primary campaign should help clarify what each candidate stands for so voters can make an educated choice at the polls. What’s happeni...

  I wasn’t going to write this morning. I’m cold, my head hurts, I didn’t sleep well, and I’m mad at the world.  But then something struck me: I missed my blogiversary. It’s largely a big deal only to me, but, I usually find a way to mark the day. This year, while living a life that could best be described as “just keep swimming”, I completely missed it. I don’t know if that’s a matter of concern or a sign of personal growth.  Anyway, you know the drill. Village Green/Town² first appeared on March 5th, 2011 on Columbia Patch. I eventually moved it to Blogger. That’s it. 2011 - 2026 and counting. I’m not going to get sentimental about it. Well, except for one small thing.  Last summer when I was going through a terrible, horrible, no-good time in my life I just plain stopped writing. I didn’t see how the blog could continue. If it hadn’t been for the encouragement of a good friend plus the quiet support of many folks whose names I do not know, I would not have given i...