Skip to main content

Around Town, Saturday Edition


Saturday Events!

Ahem.

Today, beginning at noon at the Harriet Tubman Cultural Center, the first annual Black History Fest. This event has been student led and student organized and they’re hoping for a good turn-out so it will become an annual event. 



You can learn more at the Eventbrite page for the event: Black History Fest.

Over at DOODLEHATCH in Long Reach, you can catch the most recent production of the Stand Up For Theatre group: Clue. 







Tickets are Twenty dollars in advance and twenty-two at the door, with reduced rates for seniors and members of the military. I’m not seeing kids’ prices so perhaps it’s not a kid-friendly show? If you haven’t been to the DOODLEHATCH space it’s definitely worth the trip. 

Tonight at the East Columbia Branch of  the Howard County Library is their annual Evening in the Stacks fundraiser to support Library programs in the community. This year’s event has a pop culture theme. Festivities begin at 7 pm. $125 per person or Two for $225. (I believe that tickets are still available.)



You can learn more at the library website. This particular fundraiser supports the library’s partnership with the Howard County School System.  One of the things that makes our library system so exceptional is the work they put into forging and maintaining partnerships with community groups. 

Even if you can’t make it to tonight’s event I encourage you to learn more about their Friends of the Library organization. (Scroll down the page to see the list of initiatives they support.)

Any other interesting happenings going on in Columbia/HoCo today? Let me know.

Village Green/Town² Comments

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...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

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 ...