Village Green/Town²

Here’s a local job listing.  Sounds interesting. (If you don’t need health insurance and other benefits, that is.) Do me a favor and think for a moment. Imagine the kinds of activities that this job will entail. Okay? Now look at this. Must have own transportation, must be able to operate an automobile …hmm… Must be able to lift up to 50 pounds, remain seated for long periods of time, and bend,stoop, reach, and climb without difficulty. Wait, what? Read the original job description again. Do these additional requirements make sense to you? They do if you understand that they are quite useful in discouraging people with disabilities from applying. It against the law to discriminate against the disabled in matters of employment. However, if you articulate specific requirements that would exclude applicants with disabilities… That’s not technically discrimination. Or is it? Imagine you are skilled and capable and can perform all of the tasks the job outlines, but you are disabled. You...

  Let’s start out this morning by thanking a few people: The person who passed along this blog post to county council candidate James Handley. The writer at the Sun for making the correction. Mr. Handley himself who reached out to me with the update and some very kind words. Here’s the Before: Here’s the After: Do you see the difference? I sure can.  In my first job out of college (library circulation, Westminster Choir College Talbott Library) I came across this quote and posted it by my desk.  If Language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done, remains undone. Confucius Accuracy matters. How you say things matters. How you frame things matters. ***** Before:  Image from HoCoGov social media After: Photo credit: Reddit userAneurhythms In between, seen on Ellicott City Reddit:  What happened to the TARDIS in OEC? Some responses: It’s in Rockburn Park now.  Sounds like they’re ...

In order to make up for lost school time, due to weather closures, today will be a school day in Howard County. No one is overjoyed by this, least of all people who had plans made well in advance.  I have nothing useful to add that hasn’t been said by other people already. It may be a difficult day in some schools. It may be just fine in others. This feels like a good opportunity to remind folks that we continually ask schools to turn on a dime, pick up the slack, and just  “make it work” under more than challenging circumstances.  ***** If you don’t have work or school commitments today you can always wander over to Clark’s Elioak Farm. They’re open, too. * New* We will be open Monday, April 6th WITH Egg Hunts • all day! Open Hours 10AM-5PM We will also be open every other day this week and resume our regular hours of Tuesday through Sunday 10 AM to 5 PM (5:30PM on weekends) Come on out to enjoy our brand new baby goats! ***** Speaking of egg hunts… If you’d like to beg...

  Ten years ago on this date I was deep into yet another HCPSS Board of Education race. Five years ago I continued to be perplexed by the lack of transparency from a Columbia group calling themselves The Rouse Project. Today? National news makes it hard to concentrate on the local scene these days. In the past I found myself passionate, frustrated, or even angry about Columbia/HoCo issues. Now there are far too many days when I look at my world and feel more fearful than anything else. I still care deeply about the school system. I am worn out from hoping that elected BOE members will vote to prioritize the most vulnerable. So often they do not. I still distrust groups who won’t tell you who they are.  On the other hand, there are people in our community doing wonderful things. Some of them weren’t in existence back in 2016 or even 2021. (Or I hadn’t yet learned about them.) For example: Columbia Community Care Community Ecology Institute  Merriweather Park at Symphony W...

  In case you were wondering what sort of things pique my curiosity…here are today’s three things. Why do people film tours of local elevators? Tour of the elevators at TenM Flats & The Metropolitan in Columbia MD Tour of the elevators at Howard Community College in Columbia MD Strange Unknown Hydraulic Elevator, 5999 Harpers Farm Rd, Columbia, MD My personal favorite is the “Strange Unknown Hydraulic Elevator.” It’s clearly not unknown. It’s in a building on Harper’s Farm Road. Is filming elevators a TikTok trend? Part of training in elevator repair programs? What is the origin of the logo of the Howard County Historical Society? It caught my eye this morning and I suddenly wondered if it had always been that way and what it is meant to represent. Yes, I did a basic Google search. So far I have not looked under the right rock. If you are in possession of this knowledge, clue me in. This last one might be hard for you to spot. It’s from an article in the Baltimore Sun about can...

  I’ve been over here flailing around trying to think of a blog topic and then I realized: it’s Friday. I can do what the heck I want. So this is what I want. I want a kitchen sink that faces towards the room and I want people to realize that, if they want me to do the dishes, they need to keep me company and talk to me. My kitchen sink faces a wall and we put a lovely photograph of the beach there. It’s attractive but hardly interactive.  If I cannot have interactive dishwashing my second choice is no dishwashing. I’m flexible. I want kitchen shelves that can be made to move up or down at the push of a button. I do not want to reach up or bend down ever again. I do not want to have to get up on a kitchen ladder. Make the shelves move for me. Put them on some kind of track. How, exactly? That’s not my job. I’m the idea person. I know this is possible because I saw it on HGTV once. Okay, maybe it was on a show called “Extreme Homes.” So what? This is an extreme want. Lastly: I ...