Skip to main content

Thinking Small



Truly the best thing I read online yesterday was the local, on-the-scene reporting of a colleague of my husband’s who had discovered a snake in her car. It had excitement, fear, humor, you name it. It was right up there with the HoCo goat story, in my opinion.

Probably the best thing about it was that it wasn’t about redistricting.

Frankly, if I had permission to bring you the snake episode in its entirety, I would, because it’s a story in which there is a problem, a request for help, and a response from friends. Granted, some of the suggestions - - “You will now need a new car” - - were tongue-in-cheek, but, overall, it was enjoyable because everyone was rooting for the protagonist.

This is not going to morph into any kind of lecture about how we all need to be kinder to each other, or about how redistricting is showing us at our worst. I’m simply exhausted by it all. I need reminders  of the small stories that show our humanity.

A friend had a getaway at the beach that restored her soul. A free concert at the Chrysalis by the Maryland Winds entertained community members. My husband and I enjoyed our first meal from new local restaurant Cazbar. Members of the local Buy Nothing group shared with each other all weekend long.

Give me the small stories, folks. The big ones are crushing me.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

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 ...