Village Green/Town²

I’ve just spent the last hour telling myself I was not going to write a year-in-review piece.  Well…not exactly. How about some wishes for the New Year, instead? Here are some things I’d like to see in 2023: Merriweather Lakehouse - - I’d like to see this business redeem itself after an ugly beginning where it essentially broke a union and circumvented new county labor legislation. It could be a local showplace, a destination for large events and for taking guests from out of town. I’d like to see it succeed. But not by crushing the very workers who are essential for making it run.  Howard County School System - - The move to more humane school start times is long overdue. The research is clear that teens desperately need later start times. Please don’t let this decision crash and burn at the last minute, or get watered down in a way that renders it useless. Also at HCPSS: Please continue to keep an eye on the wave of angry folks who are hell-bent on making LGBTQ+ students ...

  How do you remember the things you want to remember? Do you have a system? Does it work? For years I wrote things on the backs of envelopes or on scraps of paper that happened to be in my purse. Then I lost them. When I got an iPad I discovered I could save things in the Notes section. This worked pretty well until I had hundreds of items in the Notes section.  Over the last year I’ve started taking screenshots of things I want to remember. This has been working better for me. (So far.)  I tend to go through my photographs regularly, deciding what I want to keep and thinning out things that are less relevant. And, every time I do that, it jogs my memory as to why I put a particular image there to save. Here’s one: Image from PBS Facebook page Why did I save it? Not for the question, but for the way the question is set into a pattern of colors and shapes. It’s simple and also clever. It indicates winter and celebration with so few visual elements.  I started keeping...

  This is an amazing photograph, certainly one to catch your eye as you scroll on social media. A rainbow arched over a snowy landscape?  Is that even possible? Clearly it is. Image from Howard County Nature Conservancy If you’ve come upon this photo in the last twenty-four hours then you know it isn’t heralding glad tidings. Beneath the photo you’ll find bad news from the Howard County Nature Conservancy. During the bitter cold spell this week, all three floors of our environmental education center were flooded. Our loss is great, but we are grateful to our community and dedicated to our mission. In addition to floors and ceilings on all levels of the building, we lost many furnishings, equipment and educational supplies. This flood was a devastating loss for our organization, yet we are grateful for our community that has already come together in our time of need. Among the most selfless were the volunteers who worked late into the night on Christmas Eve with buckets and mop...

  This year’s community celebration of Kwanzaa in Howard County will be held at the Harriet Tubman Cultural Center. There’s something so satisfying about being able to write those words. Even though physical buildings don’t have life, the thought of those rooms and hallways being filled with celebration feels like an opportunity for new life for the beloved old school.  The event itself was booked up quite quickly, but you can watch online. In reading the information from the eventbrite page I found there was a lot there to learn from. For instance:  Habari Gani? ("What's the news?" in Swahili, the official Kwanzaa greeting) True confession: the first time I heard the words “Habari Gani” was in a Barney music video when my daughter was little. Until this year I never realized they were asking a question and I am mortified that I never took the time to find out.  Through most of my years of teaching young children I followed the philosophy that it made sense to explo...

I only get one chance to do this, so I want to get it right.   Today is a very special day. December 27th is the official release date for my daughter’s first novel. You could think of it as a belated Christmas present. All the Way Happy  will be available starting today. It is published by Carina Press (a division of Harlequin) under her pen name:  Kit Coltrane. You may know her as HoCoHouseHon . She wrote about life in Columbia/HoCo from 2011 to 2021, albeit rather intermittently in recent years. HoCoHouseHon treated local issues with a different perspective than the rest of us. When you were done reading one of her pieces, it stayed with you. It was practically imprinted onto your psyche. HoCoHouseHon’s posts were ruthlessly honest and breathtakingly poetic at the same time. She was equally as honest about issues like choosing sobriety, living with mental health challenges, or coming to terms with a healthy body image in a culture that wants to diminish women in every ...

  December 26th is known in the UK as Boxing Day. There are multiple explanations for this and none of them is a clear winner. It’s interesting to read about, though. In the US some folks observe the day after Christmas by returning presents they didn’t like or by shopping the after Christmas sales. Today I’d like to talk about a different kind of box. Boxes like this one appear at my house twice per month, holding injectable medication. It must be refrigerated, so it is shipped is a cooler with ice packs. The medication has been life-changing in addressing my severe asthma. Every time a box arrives I’m grateful all over again: for good health care, for adequate health insurance, for the people who researched and developed this treatment. They’re used for more than shipping medication, of course. The combination of the coolers and ice packs make it possible to ship perishable food products, as well. It’s now possible to ship pork pies, steaks, seafood, and items that were previous...

  ‘Twas the light before Christmas: (The lamp by the chair) That wobbled and flickered,   resisted repair. The parents were restless in their empty nest And rushed to rehome it ere the holiday fest. But mama and papa, though trying all day  Could find no new owner to take it away. So off to the corner the lamp was removed.  With hopes that a radical change would improve. It lurked by the back door, it drooped and it moped. ‘Til mama told papa, “It’s not what we hoped.” Then, sparkling with mischief she jumped up and said, “Let’s not try to hide it. Let’s light it instead!” So quickly they trimmed it, their fingers - - they flew! Then basked in the twinkling of red, green, and blue. The broken down lamp that had nowhere to go Now lit up the room with a holiday glow. And when College Kid came home and looked at the sight They slowly acknowledged it might be “alright.”  But maybe some ornaments? ‘Twas soon was begun, And the light before Christmas was in for s...

It is dark and cold. The year is coming to an end. Each year at this time we have a tendency to look back. We try to make sense of the last twelve months before moving on. Perhaps we just want to recount what has been important to us so we don’t forget.  This post is dedicated to all the good people we don’t know.  Columbia/HoCo is filled with so many organizations and initiatives that do good things. I write about them a lot here. If I attempted to list them all I’d be sure to forget some, so I won’t. Today I want to dedicate this space to all in our community who perform unknown acts of kindness, both large and small. I may not know them but I know that our year has been leavened by their gifts. They are the completely unorganized and probably unaffiliated league of do-gooders. Honestly, life is not worth living without them. They are the light that shines against the darkness. They are the one small thing that happens in your day that keeps it from being an utter disaster. ...

  Image from Poorly Drawn Lines, Reza Farazmand* Today’s post comes to you from the adhd files. Life post-diagnosis hasn’t been quite the steady march of progress that I had envisioned. Medication makes a huge difference but it’s not a magic wand. It opens doors but only if I am willing to do the work to walk through them. I get into the zone and things go extremely well, and then gradually the focus and forward motion slips away and I feel like I’m stuck. Hence, today’s comic from Poorly Drawn Lines. I’ve come to realize that the way I’m learning to cope with my adhd brain is cyclical. I can either accept that and be kind to myself about it, or I can beat myself up for not simply getting better and better in a linear fashion. Honestly? I’ve done some of each. A  helpful technique I’ve learned about in the past year is called Body Doubling. No, not that . The simplest explanation might be that Body Doubling is having someone “keep you company” while you complete a task that is...

I wonder who goes to the Mall on the night before Christmas? Are you a Christmas Eve shopper?  I have been known to be out during the day on 12/24 picking up stocking presents at the Walgreens or perhaps even Target. But Christmas Eve at the Mall? Nope. Not me. In my childhood, Christmas Eve was when my father would be dragging one of his three daughters with him to find something for my mother at the very last minute. We all took turns on these Godforsaken forays into holiday desperation. Perhaps that’s why I don’t go to the Mall on Christmas Eve now. It’s possible, though, that the frenzy of last minute shopping - - that I abhor - - is a part of someone else’s regular Christmas tradition. They may find it thrilling, for all I know. The thrill of the hunt. The burst of adrenaline, or dopamine, or the rush of a sugar-infused caffeine drink that spurs them on to complete the epic quest. Now our Mall, the Mall in Columbia, isn’t open past 6 pm on Christmas Eve and I think that’s a go...

One of the idiosyncratic wonders of the Oakland Mills universe is the fact that we have barns. Two barns, right smack in the middle of the Village Center. Even better, they have names. The Barn, and The Other Barn. This is kind of hilarious when you think about how much energy was spent in naming streets in Columbia. In a place where you can find Broken Lute, Rustling Leaf, and Liquid Laughter, how did these two barns escape similarly literary/artistic renaming?  Of course, the barns predate the New American City, having been a part of the Owings Dorsey Dairy Farm. At least, The Other Barn does. I’m having trouble finding info specific to the ‘The Barn’ itself. The Other Barn houses the Oakland Mills Community Association offices and is the location where community meetings are held. It’s also an event venue. I’ve attended board meetings there, birthday parties, concerts, festivals, art shows, dances, and children’s performances. I’ve even interviewed Girl Scouts in the lobby. ...

  Torn from the headlines! Ahem. Seen on the pages of NextDoor! It doesn’t sound as impressive, somehow. The truth is, I’m hijacking this story for my own purposes. Someone stole our entire mailbox. Has anyone heard of this happening or know of recent mailbox thefts in the area? I really have never heard of this happening before. - - E.E., Worthington  Image is a screenshot from NextDoor  While it won’t make the nightly news, the mystery of a disappearing mailbox tugged at something in my memory.  Oh, yes. That. The dreaded teenaged years in Stamford, Connecticut where there was absolutely nothing for teenagers to do but our Sunday night youth group at the Congregational Church. Yes, there were occasional school dances, plays, and concerts. But most of the time there was nothing. Especially if you were a teenager with limited resources. It became a “craze” for a while for teenagers to go out and steal street signs under cover of darkness. You know, for fun. Sometimes...

  The story I have for you today was born a long time ago and nurtured over many rides to and fro on Route 108 in Columbia. It’s a story about a building. If you take a right turn from Thunder Hill Road on Route 108, you will soon pass a building that looks like this. Image is a screenshot from Loopnet.com   This building, now called Columbia Station , is located at 9123 Old Annapolis Road. It did not always look like this.  It used to be a rather odd thing, neither fish nor fowl, with a sign in the window (for a tv repair shop, maybe?) and annual posters for Dick Gelfman’s Ride Across Maryland event. At one end, in what felt like a tiny outbuilding, was a seamstress who did excellent and speedy work hemming my daughter’s concert skirt for the Peabody Children's Chorus.  I wish I had taken a photograph of it then. I’d love to compare it with what is there today.  At some point the entire site was taken over with renovation. Again, I wish I had photographs of thi...

On the Sabbath, two days before Hanukkah, someone sprayed words of hate about Jewish people on a school sign in Montgomery County. No, it’s not Howard County. But, when it comes to hate speech and antisemitism, it’s close enough to be worrisome, even frightening. There have been enough examples of violent acts against worshippers in synagogues around the country in recent years to take every ugly act of desecration seriously. Antisemitic graffiti found at Montgomery County’s Whitman High , Matthew Delaney, WTOP School officials said they found antisemitic graffiti in front of a Bethesda, Maryland, high school just after 8 a.m. Saturday. Walt Whitman High School Principal Dr. Robert Dodd said in a letter to the community that the hateful words were seen on the Montgomery County school’s sign. I don’t know what it is to feel the fear that incidents like this can cause for their targets. I do have a strong sense that those of us who are not targets must not remain silent. Our Jewish frien...