Village Green/Town²

I attended back to school night on Thursday at my daughter's high school. I sat nervously in the auditorium with the other ninth grade parents, wondering what the experience would be like. I thought of how old my mother was when I began high school. I tried to imagine sitting there in the auditorium with her as a peer, chatting about having our youngest begin high school. Everything felt very new. The ninth grade team leader began her presentation. I began to notice something unusual. Her talk did not include any educational buzzwords. There was no grit, no rigor, no testing, no data, no ed-reform talking points. It was thrilling. The team leader talked about what high school is like, what ninth graders are like, and what we, as parents, can do to support our kids as they evolve from children to young adults. She was clear that over-helping prevents students from learning independence and self-reliance. It was a good message to hear. After being dismissed from the ninth grade paren...

Honoring the memory of the brilliant Oliver Sacks today by running the post from last August. ***** What Henry Knows Today I'm going to talk about Henry. Henry has been on my mind a lot lately. What? You don't remember Henry? Really? That's okay. Some days Henry doesn't remember Henry, either. This is Henry. His story is just one part of a documentary entitled "Alive Inside" created by Dan Cohen and his nonprofit organization Music and Memory. The film also features Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia , and Professor of Neurology at NYU. "Alive Inside" follows the Music and Memory project, which worked with Alzheimer's patients and found music to be "a powerful tool for connecting elders to the people around them and restoring a sense of self."* In the video clip, Oliver Sacks says, "The philosopher Kant once called music the quickening art, and Henry is being quickened--brought to life." Science Friday featured the Music...

So. Bridge Columbia. After twenty four hours of reflection, my thoughts about the email I received from the co-chairs of the Oakland Mills Village Board have evolved a bit. What follows is complete and utter armchair speculation. You have been warned . There has been nothing about this in the actual news. If the County Executive isn't announcing it, if the Howard County Times isn't covering it, that is a clue to me that this is very likely a non-story. This would explain why the lowest folks on the food chain are doing the announcing. Any movement on the Bridge can be interpreted to be a success for their term of leadership. But it seems that this: We are pleased to inform the community that County Executive Allan Kittleman has added the US 29 Pedestrian Bridge (also known as Bridge Columbia) to the County's Priority Letter submitted to Maryland State Transportation Secretary, The Honorable Pete Rahn. may not be such a big deal after all. So, what is it? Well, in t...

Late yesterday afternoon I received an email from the Oakland Mills Village Board Co-Chairs with this announcement: We are pleased to inform the community that County Executive Allan Kittleman has added the US 29 Pedestrian Bridge (also known as Bridge Columbia) to the County's Priority Letter submitted to Maryland State Transportation Secretary, The Honorable Pete Rahn. Details of the project, outlined in the Priority Letter, dated August 25, 2015, request that the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) allocate funding towards the design phase to improve the present pedestrian bridge across US 29 with enhanced safety features and to improve and to incorporate transit services. The bridge provides a direct connection from Downtown Columbia to Oakland Mills. This funding request is a result of a Funding Roundtable that County Executive Kittleman convened in June with stakeholders, including representatives from MDOT. Well. Wasn't it just last week that we wer...

We're back to school in Howard County and already we have reports of young women being " dress-coded " for dubious reasons. And yes, it's young women. The enforcement of the "unduly exposes or reveals skin or undergarments" is being imposed primarily on teenaged girls who are dressing appropriately for the hot end of summer weather. It is easy to think that this is happening to students who are deliberately trying to cause problems by wearing scandalously revealing attire. It isn't. It's happening to students who are at school, ready to learn, whose only crime is that their tank top straps aren't "enough fingers wide" or whose shorts don't quite meet that fingertip rule. It is happening to young women who are perhaps too curvy by the school's standards, whose legs are just a little too long. Maybe if her body were different, she could slip by unnoticed. Maybe. I send my daughter to school to learn, not to have her body judge...

Five days of prednisone plus a brand new yellow jacket sting morphing into high-itch status have taken their toll on me. I've been up since four. My thoughts are all over the map. Add to that the switchover to a hectic out-the-door schedule for the rest of my family, and I'm lucky to have even grabbed a cup of coffee at this point. Here is what is on my mind this morning: Rutherford imposes "no recording" rule on press by Bryan Sears of The Daily Record First thoughts: not sure which is worse, the fact that Rutherford did this, or the subsequent ill-treatment meted out by Rutherford's staff towards Mr. Sears for writing the article. A particularly low note in all of this: Sears: Asked a question about how the admin will ensure spending on a program will be cost effective and the response was,"I call that a clown question, bro," (Boyd Rutherford) Oh, really? As you may recall, Mr. Rutherford is the same person who responded to a highly offensive statemen...

We're having a yellow jacket problem at my house. I just got stung for the second time in a week. So now all of us have been stung twice. I am already on a five-day course of steroids for the first one. I seem to have the worst reactions of the three of us. Naturally I would tell anyone who might be considering coming to my house right now that we're having a yellow jacket problem. While we might say that dealing with them is a home maintenance issue, and we have acted responsibly in having the exterminator come out twice and treat the affected area, it's more than maintenance. Insect stings make some people very, very sick. They can be life-threatening. So we would want to give you as much information as possible, so you could make an informed decision. Not too difficult a course of action, right? We care about our friends and neighbors and feel a sense of responsibility for their well-being. In the same way, parents and other members of the Glenwood Middle School comm...

I just deleted what would have been an overly-sentimental post about my youngest child starting high school. You're welcome. All over Howard County today there will be many momentous firsts. In some cases the children will have the first day of school jitters. In other cases, it will be the parents. And don't forget teachers, staff, and administrators--it's their first day, too. At Glenwood Middle School parents must make a choice as to whether they trust verbal assurances that their children are safe from an ongoing mold problem. The factual information they requested has not been provided to them. In many schools there are new administrators. There was a rather large shake-up and resorting this year. My friends from the Ducketts Lane RECC have been dispersed and redistributed throughout the system. Many of our best teachers took the buyout and retired in the Spring. The effect of their absence will soon be felt. Along with that are the young, first-year teachers w...

  I drove downtown twice Friday to try to get this picture. Alas, my timing was all wrong. But someone else had the same idea. (Photo used with permission.)   The Columbia Association has been looking for a new home for as long as I can remember. And then, about a year ago, they finalized their plans . Friday and Saturday were moving days. Now they will begin the task of settling into their new home in the Hillside Center, an office complex located off of Stevens Forest Road in East Columbia. I could rail about just "how wrong" it is to move CA Headquarters out of Downtown Columbia. I could complain that it's always been in the same place, but I'd be wrong. It's just always been there since I have been paying attention. The last move was in 1992. There is a symbolism to having CA downtown, but that symbolism would have come with a cost. Lakefront real estate is expensive. The Downtown Plan is moving forward, and CA made a choice to prioritize their financial resou...

Today my friend Dylan Goldberg is driving 5,000 books into Baltimore City. Children's books, donated by people all over Howard County. You can read more about how this all began here . In honor of Dylan, Anna Mudd, Beth Panageotou, Courtney Watson, and others who worked on this project, I am re-running this post from August 21, 2012. ***** To Have and to Hold I love books. I have loved books all my life. I remember the Little Golden Books of my childhood-- Mister Dog , Hansel and Gretel , The Poky Little Puppy . I remember my mother reading to me at bedtime from a book of children's poems. Oh, how I wished that I had seen the battle between the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat, or that there really was a Sugarplum Tree in the Garden of Shuteye Town! When I was quite young, my grandfather gave me a book that changed my life. It was The Bennett Cerf Book of Pop Up Riddles . It was one of the first books that was ever given to me, to have for my very own. I was the younge...

So the meeting at Glenwood Middle to discuss mold in the school building took place Wednesday evening. Amanda Yeager did a write up for the Howard County Times and Amy Aubert of ABC2 News also provided coverage . Parents present at the meeting have been giving feedback on their group's Facebook page. One piece of information leapt out at me. Three uniformed police officers were present at the meeting. Why? The parents certainly didn't invite them. They can only have been there at the behest of the school system staff. In a time of budget austerity where we have to cut back on classroom positions, why would we need to pay three police officers for an evening of work? Is there any evidence of parents at this school behaving in a violent or uncontrolled manner? No. Is there any evidence of Howard County parents in any school behaving in a way that would warrant police presence? No. Parents are sometimes disgruntled. They occasionally raise their voices and have been known to spe...

Okay, this isn't local but I'm from Ohio so it's personal. Republican Governor John Kasich is making headlines because of this : And so if I were not president but king in America I would abolish all teachers’ lounges where they sit together and worry about how “woe is us.” Good grief! So much of corporate ed. reform comes from people who know absolutely nothing about education. And here we have a man who is clearly obsessed with what goes on in the Teachers' Lounge. He doesn't know, so perhaps he feels excluded? No idea. But he doesn't know, so he just makes it up. When I was eighteen I thought I might want to be a Congregational minister, because I wanted to write sermons and preside over macaroni suppers. Over time it became clear to me that being a minister entailed much more than that. There are budgets and meetings and crises of faith. Hours of hospital visits, anxious waiting, participating in the suffering of the dying. It's not all church pot lucks...

There will be a meeting tonight, from 7-9 pm, at Glenwood Middle School in the cafeteria. I think it will be an extremely interesting meeting. On the one hand, you have school parents who have been tirelessly working to bring issues of mold in their school out in the open and get them addressed. In the other hand you have officials of the school system who say that students and teachers were never at risk. On August 5th the Howard County Times published an editorial taking the school's system to task for their lack of transparency in handling the mold issue at Glenwood Middle. The editorial was clearly based on the excellent factual reporting by Amanda Yeager. On August 12 HoCoTimes published a letter from the Communications Director of the Howard County School System, which expresses her "disappointment" at the paper's editorial. She asserts that it is untrue that the school system withheld information from the community. But upon what information is her let...

On Saturday I was surprised to see this exchange on Twitter. The only reason I was able to see this is that Mr. Kittleman retweeted it. There's just one problem. Drinks at the Howard County Fair were never a part of any legislation on the table. So this pat on the back from the Beverage Association is factually incorrect. And I'm not the only one who spotted that. A local reader responded:   Help me understand. When was this ever in question? And then, through the magic of Twitter, Mr. Kittleman's retweet was undone and disappeared. A bit later he replied: In fairness, the ban did not extend to the #HoCoFair, but I am proud to have repealed the sugary drink ban. Yes, yes you are. And the MD/DE/DC Beverage Association is proud of you too, Mr. Kittleman. As for me, I'd be happier if you had told the truth the first time before you got called on it, and refused to give the appearance of taking credit for something you didn't actually do. Those pesky facts have a way of...

This morning while hunting through HoCoTimes for topics I discovered what looks to be an ongoing column about Ellicott City by Janet Kusterer entitled "Mostly Mainstreet". The August 12th post is a folksy mix of commentary on the new staircase , a suggestion to run a contest to name the parking lots, news on markets, music, the celebration of Wilhelmina Oldfield's 102nd birthday, and more. I love it. (Perhaps I see myself in it a little bit?) So, where's the Columbia version of this? Is there a "Largely Lakefront" column that I've been missing? Surely we've got plenty of small-town news fit for print in the New American City. I think we deserve our own local storyteller with an eye to the smaller, more human stories, don't you? If a Columbia equivalent to "Mostly Mainstreet" already exists, please let me know. Or, if it once existed and met an untimely end, I'd love to know why.   ***** Today Howard County teachers and staff...

I'm sitting outside in my new patio space for the first time ever. It is cool with just a hint of a breeze. The new striped umbrella my husband scored on sale at Ace yesterday is all set up to protect me, but the sun won't really make an appearance out here until later. Right now it's providing a cheery ambience. On my left I can hear the hum of my neighbor's air conditioning unit. From my right comes a fairly frequent whoosh of cars on the road. Overhead, the occasional airplane. There's some kind of a steady insect buzz--cicadas? Footsteps, the beep of a car unlocking, engine starting. A motorcycle zipping by, getting louder as it approaches, then receding into the distance. We can't hear any of this inside our house. Our double-paned windows protect us and the hum of our air conditioner insulates us from all the sounds of the world around us. There is light and there is darkness, but all the sounds of life are muffled. Our ship sails in silence. We are, so...

As I noted on June 22nd in this space, I decided to hang up my traveling shoes with the Howard County Schools and was looking to put down roots. After twelve years of being a traveling show, it was time. I'm excited to report that I'll soon be embarking upon a new educational adventure at Glenelg Country School, as an assistant teacher for three year olds in their Little Dragons program. I'm hoping to incorporate my musical background into the new position. And--ta da!--We just finished having our back patio completely redone. Now we need patio furniture and an umbrella. I am looking for leads on end-of-season local deals--got any? I'm hoping to enjoy this space from now until whenever cold weather makes it impossible. I have waited 16 years for this. The time for enjoyment is now. Our HOA broke down and painted stripes in the parking lot. I am sure this is gratifying to people who think people other than themselves just don't park correctly. My daughter poin...

I'd like to thank Kirsten Litkowski-Coombs for bringing the following letter to the editor to my attention yesterday. As both a local blogger and a member of the Town Center Village Board, she's clearly made it her business to read the Columbia Flier cover to cover and stay informed. "Here's the way CA ought to be run," says the writer. What follows is an irate manifesto of negativity. One wonders what particular current issue stirred up the writer to the point that he felt these words must be said. The rhythm of the words suggests a clash of the cymbals at the end of each sentence, or perhaps a crack of the whip. The writer also refers to the assessment Columbia residents pay as a tax. This is simply inaccurate. "Why do they spend our tax money on charitable donations?" he rages. I do wish that someone could straighten him out in this regard. Does Milton Matthews make house calls? Underlying the many accusations in the letter is the demand that CA pro...

Good morning, campers! Some local news for you today: A new bakery has opened in Columbia. Renata's Tasty Bites has taken over the space on Snowden once occupied by Linda's Bakery. You may already know her from Howard County Farmers markets. You can follow her on Twitter @RenataAlanovic. The race is on! Retired Music teacher Robert Miller is running for the Howard County Board of Education. You can learn more about him here . There's a blog party tonight for bloggers and their readers at Pub Dog, from 5:30 to 7:30. Learn more here . HCPSS has responded to the editorial about mold with this letter by Rebecca Amani-Dove, Communications Director. Andrew Conrad, Sports for the Howard County Times, is leaving. Again really cool, engaging, knowledgeable people are leaving our local paper. How can we provide incentive for good folks to stay? The Howard County Fire Department held what looks to have been a wildly successful event for local bloggers. Take a look at what they learn...

About twice a year we indulge in the evil goodness which is KFC. When I woke up this morning I remembered why--MSG. I have an incredible MSG hangover this morning. I won't go into detail, but I will tell you that my mouth feels like a hook and loop fastener . My husband grabbed dinner because he knew I would be ducking out quickly to go to on Oakland Mills Village Board Meeting and that it would useful if I didn't have to worry about cooking. He was right. I had been practicing what I would be saying during Resident Remarks all day long. Dinner just wasn't on my radar. One of the things I talked about last night was generational differences. How do we reach out to young buyers looking to buy a first home? We have to understand how they think. They are not just mini versions of us, freshly-cloned for our convenience. As I looked around the room last night as I spoke, one fact was obvious. Despite the relatively good turn out, there was only one person in the room who was eve...

Got out of the Bubble briefly yesterday. Yep, still such a rarity that I feel inclined to report it. My daughter is enrolled in a theatre camp at Round House in Bethesda this week. I went with my husband to pick her up at the end of the day. First, to all of you people who commute every day, I'm sorry that I have never taken the time to stop and commiserate with you. It is brutal. The trip took an easy half hour to get there, over an hour to return. I have spent twelve years driving all over Howard County but that is nothing compared to this mind-sucking experience. (For one thing, Howard County is more scenic.) Aside from that, I was reminded yet again how important it is to get out of the Bubble. You know you have spent too much time in Columbia when you wonder why all the streets and houses look so...old. Don't laugh. As we drove in towards Bethesda on the East-West Highway, passing the Trader Joe's, it felt like entering another world. Old suburban neighborhoods. Ho...

To the readers and members of the Yahoo Listserv Howard Public Ed: One of your members is copying and pasting material written by others onto the Listserv. My blog is one of them. While I appreciate the mission of your group to share information in order to add to a wider discussion of the issues, this particular method is unacceptable. It is stealing. My blog is being printed in its entirety without my name, and without a link to my blog page. And mine is not the only one. This shows disrespect to the writers. It is also illegal. Every blogger wants to be read, and to contribute to conversations about the issues they care about. But the work they create is their work. Stripping away the identity of the writer is demeaning. As an example of how independently written material should be referenced: "From Village Green Town Squared - Mold An (sic)Truthiness" posted by pamythompson on Howard Public Ed You'll see this includes title, author, source, and a working lin...

It's not local news, but I'm taking it personally. Trump says, Erickson says, Megyn Kelly gets trashed, Trump gets uninvited. Actually, that's not the part I'm taking personally. It's this . Erick Erickson: ‘Most Monkeys’ Are Smarter Than Women I honestly did not know that there were any men in the civilized world that still believed stuff like this. And, although deeply offensive, it's nothing compared to the onslaught of misogynistic comments on social media. Where does this all-consuming hatred for women come from? I asked that question on Twitter yesterday and got one response: Fear, power, ignorance . Much as I'd like to believe otherwise, there are men like this in Howard County. If you read enough comments or follow enough social media streams--poof!--there they are. They live here, work here, raise children here, vote here. And to them half of the world is inferior, to be hated, mocked, silenced. This just hurts my heart. How can we hope to bui...

Another episode in the continue saga of my crazy little house... Air conditioning. We have it. When it's on it blows loud enough that you have to turn up the television. You can't always hear people talking if they are across the room. It cools downstairs extremely well, upstairs--not so much. This seems ridiculous, given that our house it so darn small, but, that's the way it is. So, of the three residents of my house, I am the one who gets hot the fastest. I will be adjusting the AC to be cooler, while my husband will be going to fetch a hoodie in self defense. Recently I realized that a particular annoyance was that, although "my chair" was almost directly under an air vent, the air was blowing away from me. I could hear the air blowing but I wasn't getting any cooler. This led to anxiety. Then, a sense of anger or panic. "Why am I not getting any cooler?" I blurted out, "Why can't we reverse the angle on that thing so it blows on me pers...

Sometimes a pair of googly-eyes makes all the difference in the world. The folks at Healthy Harbor in Baltimore seem to know this. The Healthy Harbor initiative, whose goal is "a cleaner, greener future for our neighborhoods, streams, and harbor" has put a remarkable device to work in the Inner Harbor. A trash wheel. But that's not all. They have created an anthropomorphic personality for their very useful device on Twitter. (Note the googly-eyes.) Oh my word, this guy is adorable. Move over, Colonel Gateway. Not only is this creature cute, he has a funny and engaging Twitter presence. I have come to be rather fond of him. In fact, I think they should open a merch store for him. Who wouldn't want a Mr. Trash Wheel t-shirt? He's already beginning to make a name for himself on social media, coming in second in a Baltimore Magazine poll of best local social media accounts. Can the Mobbies be far behind?   As if this weren't exciting enough for our hardw...

Yesterday the Baltimore Sun/HoCo Times released an editorial addressing the school system's handling of the mold issue at Glenwood Middle School. Read it. Entitled, "Howard school district wrong to keep mold investigation under wraps", it concludes: The picture that emerges is of a school district that wished to keep the mold issue under wraps until it had found a way to put a lid on the problem. This not only raised risks, it was foolish at a time when a scrap of information can go viral on social media. It is not as if Howard County is a community backward in the ways of digital interconnectedness. The school district is on the case. Two cheers. But a vestige of distrust now remains. The school district should take a lesson and move transparency, and enhanced communications, to the front of the class. I'm glad the paper took this issue seriously enough to address in an editorial. This is certainly a public health issue that we can all agree on: schools should ...

Back in May I wrote a rather stern post about vending machines. The gist of it was that Howard County shouldn't be in the vending machine business at all. Local blogger AnnieRie responded that there was a history to why there were vending machines in county/government buildings. There had been a time when these places provided food service for employees, and over time this was phased out. The victims of cost-cutting measures, I presume. What I didn't know--until yesterday--was that this very thing happened to the employees in the George Howard building, when County Executive Kittleman cancelled the contract with the food service operations and discontinued their café. I can see why wanting to have a healthier variety of choices in their vending machines has become of particular interest. The bigger choice employees had was taken away. In the comments section yesterday, Board of Education member Cynthia Vaillancourt said: I wondered why the Cafe disappeared one day. I had a me...

The other day when I was talking about CB 17, Nutritional Standards, and vending machines, this question came up in the comments section: Serious question, related to this topic. On last night's 10 pm news, Channel 45 had a story on this topic. The reporter made an interesting assertion: the current contract between the county and the vending machine operator extends through 2019. This bill can't force a change in what the vending operator does until that contract expires, unless the county wants to unilaterally break the contract, to its detriment. So this bill won't impact those vending machines for four years, by which time a majority of the County Council will be gone due to term limits. I had never heard that asserted before. Is there anyone out there who knows whether it's true? Because if it's the case that this bill really won't impact anything for four years, this truly becomes a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. On the other hand, if it was j...