Choose Community

What makes a blog a Community Blog? Should it be a place to post upcoming events in the community? Should it highlight local community news or happenings in local schools? Should a community blogger write about what makes the community unique? Is a community blog a place for musing and pondering about the meaning of community happenings? Or a place to call out bad actors for bad behavior on the local scene? Can a community blogger relate personal experiences pertaining to local life? Or look ahead and editorialize about what the future holds?

Here in Howard County we have HoCoBlogs, a website and, by extension, a collegial association of local bloggers. (We even have parties!) The web page divides blogs into categories: Community, Personal, Politics, Faith, Topics, and so on. Scanning the page each day you might choose to look through it as you used to leaf through the newspaper: certain sections or writers draw you in. You might dip into new topics or blogs if the title intrigues, or if the item was recommended to you by a friend.

Right now Howard County Magazine is asking for your opinions in their annual Best of Howard Survey. And I am making a recommendation to you, as a friend of this blog. Please vote for Tales of Two Cities by Dennis Lane as Best Blog in Howard County. His blog stands as the definition of a true community blog. To2C covers all of the items mentioned in the first paragraph and more: you could also expect to find a bit of local history and trivia, food and wine, real estate news, with music and humor thrown in for good measure.

It would have really tickled Dennis to win this. Now that he is no longer with us, it will mean so much to his family, friends, fellow bloggers, and the greater Community that he loved so well.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Go to the blog yourself. I recommend starting with the category tagged "Scene This Week in". Dip in a little and enjoy.

And then vote.

P.S. Please make sure to vote in at least ten categories, or your ballot will be discarded.

hocoblogs@@@

Comments

Teacher Gifts

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They Can Wait

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Separate and Unequal

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 ...

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