June IS Busting Out All Over

The weather looks good, folks! Here’s a quick rundown of things going on around town.

The Markets:

Freetown Farm Plant Sale, 9 am - 1 pm

Maple Lawn, 9 am - 1 pm

Clarksville Commons, 10 am - 2 pm

Some school events open to the community:

Thunder Hill Elementary School Wellness Fair, 10:30 am - 2:30 pm

Running Brook Elementary School Fair, 4 - 7 pm

An excellent educational opportunity from the Anti Racist Education Alliance and Columbia Community Care:

Unlearn University Annual Conference, Wilde Lake High School, 9 am - 1 pm*

A cooking workshop at the library:

Scrappy Cooking, Miller Branch Library, 11 am - 12:30 pm*

Festivals!!!

BikeAround Downtown Columbia, Mango Tree Lane, beginning at 9 am today and running til 6 pm tomorrow*

Downtown Columbia Maker Faire, Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, 12 - 4 pm*

Old Ellicott City Pride, Main Street Lot F, 1 - 8 pm

Savage Fest, Baldwin Common and Carroll Baldwin Hall, 10 am - 5 pm

A Lakefront Concert* and a Main Street Movie:

If you see an asterisk* that indicates that there is some form of registration involved. Click the link to learn more.

Columbia’s official birthday is June 21st, in case you were thinking that the Columbia Association had scheduled it on the early side. They did. Why not celebrate all month? Maybe make some cupcakes.

Image from Columbia Archives via HoCo Connect blog

Village Green/Town² Comments

Comments

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 ...

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