Village Green/Town²

  As I checked in on my mother-in-law at five am this morning, I told her, “I need to write about something that isn’t so heavy this morning. Something like: the music society is having a cake sale.’” Life is really heavy right now. Conveniently enough…Can I interest you in some cake? The Columbia Cake Exchange will be held on March 29th at Stonehouse in Long Reach.  What’s a cake exchange? Think Cookie Swap but with cake slices. If you love baking, this is the event for you! A cake exchange is a fun, community-driven way to share your love of baking. Everyone brings a cake they’re proud of, then fills a take-home box with slices from other bakers. It’s a fun way to discover new flavors, swap ideas, and enjoy far more cake than you could ever bake yourself. We're hoping to see a bunch of unique, beautiful cakes for our inaugural Columbia Cake Exchange but no need for perfection, just have fun!  Funds raised will be donated to the 501(c)(3) non-profit Movement in Music Ens...

  The title of the article upset me so much that it took me a while to read it. And, when I did, the story it told was every bit as awful as I had feared. Police fatally shoot resident of Columbia complex that supports adults with disabilities , Matti Gellman, Baltimore Banner  A man who was fatally shot by Howard County Police early Sunday was a resident of an apartment complex dedicated to supporting adults with disabilities, according to the group that manages the complex. In a statement, Mission First Housing Group said it learned Sunday morning that one of its residents at Patuxent Commons in Columbia was shot and killed outside the property after a wellness check by police. Some wellness check. And then I read the comments. I was not prepared for what I learned.  The vast majority of them were compassionate and wise. I don’t know any of these people personally (at least as far as I know) but they are a cut above the folks who post on the HCPD Facebook page. Each bul...

A wise person once told me that the people who are the closest to the actual work of education have the least power/say/input of anyone in a school system. That would be teachers, and from my experience that’s true. Mindbogglingly stupid, but true. Today I’m writing because it seems that it may also be true in libraries, and it concerns me. I’ve been sitting on this for a while because I’m a huge fan of our library system and I didn’t want to see my words twisted by bad actors for their own purposes.  The recent firing and then rehiring of library shelvers was the last straw for me.  So, let’s look back a bit. These are the questions I was asking in November of 2025. This is very basic. Am I correct in assuming that workers would not go to the effort to organize/establish a union if their relationship with management was satisfactory? In other words, that unions come about because of an unresolved problem or problems? I reached out to a friend whose area of expertise is preci...

  March 1, 2025 It’s feeling like a no-blog day, folks. I know there are local things to write about but national news is just flattening me. March 1, 2026 Same, dear readers. Same. Let’s back up a day and see what I was thinking about on 2/28/2025. February 28, 2025  F ³: Big Stretch Do you recognize this: (Not my photo. Read on to learn more.) They’re called resistance bands. Or, to preschoolers in my music and movement classes, they were called “the red stretchy things.” A resistance band is used in physical therapy and in some exercise programs to build muscle strength. Here’s the complete photograph from an online article entitled  “Types of Resistance Bands: How to Choose and Use.” [Resistance bands]  help you to build muscle strength by putting your muscles under tension as they work. The further you stretch the band, the harder your muscles work. By creating tension during movements, resistance bands engage muscles effectively, promoting muscle growth and enh...

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

My daughter, an attractive professional woman in her thirties, bought a car yesterday. A used car, but a very nice one. We almost didn’t get to hear her tell about it because it seems that the financing guy was determined to hold her hostage.  She would not budge.  Recalling her experience, she remarked that the sales associate was wonderful and that she was completely satisfied with that part of the deal. As to the money part? “I don’t think it was personal,” she said. “ I think he did to me what he does to every attractive woman who walks in there.” The pride I felt - - not just for my daughter but for every woman who has been jerked around in a car dealership - - was immense. It was exhilarating. They tried to saddle her with an enormous monthly car payment which was nothing like the figure that had been floated over the phone.  She got out the piece of paper where she had written it. She also got out her calculator and went through all the numbers, step by step. She s...