Village Green/Town²

  One of the items that was lost in the great summer ceiling debacle was an old book from my childhood entitled Sugar and Spice: The ABC’s of Being a Girl, by Phyllis McGinley.  It was my sister’s book, but it made a deep impression on me. Some years back I bought my own copy from an online purveyor of used books, largely to see if it was as awful as I remembered. It was.  When I am eighteen or a little bit older I’m going to wear earrings that hang to my shoulder. I’ll feel like an empress  I’ll walk like a queen In high heels and earrings, when l am eighteen. Something about this book left me with a feeling that there was some secret mystery about being a girl and that I was never, ever going to be on the inside of that secret. Over the years I realized that the worldview championed in this book wasn’t the be-all and end-all of who I could be. I didn’t have to fit this mold to be acceptable as a girl/teen/woman. I had a choice. (Thank you, Women’s Lib/Feminist Move...

  Labor Day Weeknd around here is not jam-packed with activities and that makes sense to me. Some folks take a last trip to the beach. Some host or attend cookouts. Somehow it doesn’t feel like a weekend where your free time should be driven by a ton of commitments.  But maybe that’s just me.  Still, don’t forget the markets today: Clarksville Commons and Old Ellicott City . The movie tonight at the Win Bin is Pirate Radio.  Down at the Lakefront, Guys in Thin Ties bring the 80’s to Columbia!  will be presented tonight courtesy of the Columbia Association. There’s a ticketed event at the Jim Rouse Theatre in Wilde Lake called Horror Circus. Possibly not for young children, yikes. I’m not recommending it necessarily - - but seeing the information made me wonder if there’s a central listing of all the (non-school) performances at the Rouse Theatre. Will check. A group called Misspent Youth will be performing at Glory Days Grill this evening. What intrigues me ...

  Yesterday afternoon I sat at a picnic table in the shade as my youngest and I enjoyed snowballs with ice cream on top at Opie’s in Catonsville. The weather was perfect. The moment was perfect. “You know…” I began - - more for myself, I think - - “This has been the most normal summer afternoon after what has been the weirdest summer of my life.” We had started with a visit to Scrap B’more,  the creative reuse store for art and craft supplies. (I first wrote about them in 2018.)  Yes, they are still going strong but they’ve moved to a new location in Pigtown. They were doing a brisk business while we were there and I suspect many of the young women we saw were teachers. I found a decent used watercolor set and M. walked out with a collections of beads, buttons, bangles, and stencils.  I made a mental note as we walked back to the car that I should make an appointment to donate some of my craft stash that I don’t need. It’s such a great way to keep these materials o...

  The violence that we are inflicting on our children, both here and abroad, is so reprehensible and morally shameful. No child should be shot while praying. Or shot at all. How can the United States rapidly decrease its VIOLENCE FOOTPRINT? That's the question we should be asking, answering, and implementing solutions around in our legislative halls, Oval Office, pews, corporate suites, homes, and educational institutions. May we pray with our action. BE LOVE Bernice A. King ***** King, whose childhood memories include the massacre of little girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and the brutal assassination of her own father, speaks from painful experience. Notice how she says: “The violence we are inflicting on our children, both here and abroad…”  - - because she knows and acknowledges that they are all our children. No exceptions, no omissions, no carve-outs for those we don’t care about or place value upon. They are all our children and we are responsible....

This week I learned that it is possible to talk about the shortage of housing without having the whole world crash down on you. Really. It’s easy once you know the secret. Thanks to all the kids and families who joined the Conservancy at Belmont last weekend to combat the fairy housing shortage. With natural materials that our volunteers gathered, little ones planned and built their fairy village in the pine forest. Now we just need patience and a quiet dark night for the fairies to choose their abodes! Image from Howard County Consevancy social media  Yes, there it is: a fairy housing shortage. You can relax now.  No one is going to come along and ask what color the fairies are or demand that the fairy children go to someone else’s school or live in someone else’s neighborhood.  It’s a perfectly lovely and playful experience - - immersed in nature and imagination. The children who participated probably have a strong concept of home and that everyone needs one. Why not f...

I moved to Columbia in 1999 and one of the first lessons I learned was that there was no point in trying to go out to dinner on Friday nights. Everyone in Howard County had the same idea. Local restaurants at the time did not take reservations. If you risked it, you would be on a wait list. Wait, wait, wait.  Doing this with kids (or in uncomfortable shoes) was a nightmare. Light-up coasters provided no consolation. Staying home was the better option.  Since then the number and variety of restaurants in our area has increased dramatically. This is a purely anecdotal observation. I cannot quote you exact figures. But I feel like we reached a point where there were enough options to ameliorate the Friday night dilemma. COVID wreaked havoc on the food service industry everywhere. Some local restaurants weren’t able to overcome the health and financial challenges. All the while, locals were agitating for less restrictions, more restaurants being open, more opportunities for them t...

  It’s the first day of school in the Howard County School system. Though I haven’t been in school for a long time, and my own kids have graduated, there are still some traditions that feel familiar: picking out a first day of school outfit, perhaps, packing a lunch, riding a school bus, gathering on a playground.  You hope you will have friends. You hope your teacher will like you. You hope that what you will be doing for the next school year is interesting or at least not so hard that you will be miserable. You may be looking forward to gym class more than math class. You may come to school drawn to music and the arts. You may be looking forward to the sweet relief of knowing you will have breakfast and lunch every day. Some things are very different. The current presidential administration is dismantling the Department of Education. Funding for schools is being withheld, and vital resources being used to manipulate how states  educate their children. Our students are g...

  First, the good news: the house was unoccupied. You need to know that before I post the photo. Photo shared on Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services Facebook page And here’s the post: Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services: Yesterday at approximately 10:00 p.m. firefighters responded to the 3100 block of Saint Charles Place, Ellicott City. Units arrived to find heavy fire throughout the structure. The house is located in a wooded area so crews additionally worked to extinguish surrounding trees and brush.                              The house was unoccupied. There were no reported injuries to firefighters. Crews will remain on scene for an extended time for searches and overhaul. Fire investigators from the Office of the Fire Marshal have started their investigation into the cause and origin of the fire. We received mutual aid from Baltimore County and Carroll County. Somethin...

Here we are again. The last Saturday before school starts.   Temperatures will be moderate, although humidity will be high and the pollen count is extra high. You can’t have everything, I suppose. Many families will be busy with back to school activities this weekend but there still may be room for a bit of fun around town.  There are quite a few food-oriented events today:  Kupcakes & Company in Elkridge is throwing a 15 year birthday celebration. Celia’s Cuban Cuisine is having a  Salsa Bachata Day party , which is just as much about music and dancing as is it about food.  A Home of Our Own Howard is holding a restaurant day fundraiser at Jason’s to support their programming. And of course there are the usual Farmers’ Markets in Clarksville and Ellicott City. Head over to Savage Mill for the Family Plena Workshop   with the amazing folks from Cultura Plenera. Make some music with the Columbia Pro Cantare at their Summer Sing Along. Enjoy a prog...

  Gosh, I’d like to write about something humorous today.  ***** Wryly humorous: a teacher posted that she would need to take time off to have a filling repaired and that the dental receptionist asked, “can’t you just pop over on your lunch break?”  If you are a teacher you will feel this viscerally. ***** Speaking of school lunches, what do you pack for someone who doesn’t have anough time to eat one? I am running out of ideas.  There is much bemoaning of the tendency of children to be picky eaters. And it’s not wrong. I have eaten lunch daily with hundreds of children and can attest that they can be…particular. But so can adults, although we don’t talk much about that. So you don’t have time to eat and you are, as an adult, pretty clear on what you do or don’t want to eat. And is is, frankly, limited. Lunch at work is not when you want to be encouraged to try new foods.  What’s for lunch? The trend towards grazing has made it easier to pack a variety of small...

I’m sure you are aware by now that there was a shooting in Columbia Tuesday evening, in the Merriweather District. Gun fatalities in our community are frightening and tragic. They also mean big clicks and engagement for local media outlets so they push them over and over into our social media feeds.  I’ve written about this phenomenon before. I won’t belabor the point. There’s plenty of talk online about the kinds of places in Howard County which are deemed safe compared to those that are assumed to be unsafe. I can tell you one thing: the place in Howard County where I feel the most unsafe is the comments section of the Howard County Police Department on Facebook.  One of the responses to the report of Tuesday’s shooting caught my attention. The past couple of homicides have been at the mall and now in the newest part of Columbia. Normal folks are not safe. Normal folks are not safe. Today I’d like to ask a question. Who are normal folks, and why does that matter? Because: ...

It all started with a watermelon Well, that’s not exactly true. It started with an email from Cured/18th&21st  announcing their new chef. Harry Doyle Here - Introducing Chef Christina - And Restaurant Weeks! Below the information were their Restaurant Week menus. Take a look at the first item. Starters: Compressed Watermelon.  Wait, what? Yes, you read that correctly. COMPRESSED WATERMELON: grilled peaches, burrata, pistachios, blackberry balsamic Just think for a minute. What would happen if you compressed watermelon? Envision the scenario: take a slice of watermelon (no rind) and put weight on it. Press hard. Get the picture? Squish! You now have watermelon juice. And a mess . This seems like it would be a great sensory activity for preschoolers. But this is clearly not meant to be a beverage. That would be Watermelon Squash. I did some research and it turns out that compressed watermelon is a thing. A culinary thing. It is achieved by placing the fruit in a special plas...

   The pedestrian bridge which arched over Little Patuxent Parkway is gone . One of the chief reasons given for its removal was safety. The bridge was just in terrible shape.  It is being remembered and lamented by some. Its demolition has prompted at least one “Rouse in his grave” comment on social media. For those who have legitimately fond memories of this pedestrian bridge, I offer my sympathies. As for me: I just don’t get it.  In all the time I have lived here I have never seen anyone on that bridge. (That doesn’t mean people didn’t use it, of course. I’m simply reporting my personal experience.) Nor have I ever had any reason to use the bridge.  It didn’t go anywhere I wanted to go. It didn’t connect places that I needed to be.  Overhead pedestrian walkways were all the rage when this one was built for the New American City. A bunch of them were built as a part of the Baltimore Harbor Place project, possibly by the Rouse Company. Many, if not all, h...

  The Back to School Industrial Complex is upon us again. (Sorry.)  Shop for clothes and supplies. Donate so that others will be ready for school. Squeeze in every last minute of fun before the summer is over. Gradually adjust your family’s sleep cycle so that re-entry will not be too painful.  Tired yet? Feel stressed?  But wait, there’s more. The Baltimore Sun posted these two items on Facebook in a 24 hour period. Newly reported cases of COVID up 50 per cent, hospitalizations up 123 per cent. Take your pick. Neither one is promising. I don’t have the local wastewater results, but I will look. What does this mean for back to school? What do you think? In the current political environment it has become harder and harder to encourage vaccination or even to get the general public to take COVID seriously. Caring for the wellbeing of others by masking and by staying home while ill is actively mocked.  We still don’t have any where near enough research on (or succes...

  True confession: as the summer goes on, and it gets hotter and hotter, I have less and less desire to leave the house. Therefore I have less interest in community events. Or in writing about them.   Sad, but true. I just get cranky. This does not mean that you should be like me. Even if I am likely to be at home enjoying iced coffee and immersed in my art journal you may very well want to get out and enjoy what the community and the season have to offer. For instance:  Farmers’ Markets at Clarkville Common s and Old Ellicott City Building Woodland Fairy Houses  Demonstrations of Compound Butter and Pesto at Freetown Farm CA’s Lakefront Live Back to School Bash  Learning About Archeology  Movie Night at the Wine Bin, Notting Hill Grand Opening at JS Brewery (Learn about Korean rice wine) FYI: some of these events require pre-registration. Click through to learn more. As far as the weather is concerned, I don’t see any rain in today’s forecast but both p...

  Seen on Columbia Reddit… Any belote players in the area who'd like to meet up and play? Naturally I assumed that a belote was a musical instrument. It’s not. So then I figured it must be a sport. Nope.  It’s a card game.  This struck me as a good example that life is full of reminders that I don’t know everything and that these just might be opportunities to learn something new.  ***** As a teacher of young children I’ve rarely thrown anything more risky than a bean bag, but this thread on Bluesky made me smile. Doug Mack: randomly decided to look at the history of people throwing sandwiches and... Cleveland Press, 1957 “With mustard!” Mack also writes what he calls an “Agreeably nerdy food history newsletter: snackstack.net ” so I suppose that airborne edibles are in his wheelhouse. ***** I’ve spent the summer falling asleep to the polite, unassuming tones of this fellow on YouTube. “Hello. Thanks for stopping by.” Robslondon An exploration of everything to do w...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… I continue to find things to learn and to ponder from the Kelly Corrigan Wonders podcast. I had another one of those glimmers yesterday while listening to the most recent episode:   Deep Dive with Jennifer Wallace on Mattering & Makin g.  Jennifer Wallace is the author of   Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose  . She begins her portion of the podcast with the following:  We need to know our work makes a difference. We need to know we matter. Mattering I've come to think of like gravity. When we feel it, we feel anchored. We show up to the world in positive ways. We want to connect. We want to engage. We want to contribute. Researchers have discovered that there are ingredients to mattering. Things like feeling significant, feeling appreciated, invested in, depended on. What I have seen in the research is that when we are made to feel like we don't matter, we suffer.   I didn’t listen with the expec...

  I happened upon these words last night on Pinterest of all places. The text is by Loryn Brantz. In a time of hate Love is an act of resistance In a time of fear Faith is an act of resistance  In a time of misinformation Education is an act of resistance  In a time of poor leadership Community is an act of resistance In a time like this Joy is an act of resistance Resist. Resist. Resist. As I wrote in my last post, it’s hard for me to believe that I have anything meaningful to offer as we continue to sink into chaos and cruelty. Brantz’ words sparked something inside me - - a glimmer - - that I might still find a way to be helpful.  In particular: In a time of misinformation Education is an act of resistance  In a time of poor leadership Community is an act of resistance The feedback I received last week made me realize that I’m not alone in asking this question: What can I do with the abilities that I have to make a meaningful contribution? Perhaps this is it:...

  Well, we’ve just returned home after living in hotels since June 24th. I can’t say that life is back to normal because we are living in profoundly abnormal times.  We are feeling a sense of relief that the damage to our house has been repaired. Our bedroom has a ceiling. We have a new bed to sleep in. At last I can make iced coffee without getting fully dressed and walking to the ice machine at the end of the hallway  Our attention now turns to what happens next: real life in all its forms. Catching up on what we have missed. Preparing for things to come.  I’ve been thinking a lot about whether this blog should continue or whether it is time to let it go. Honestly, I still don’t know. It isn’t merely the upheaval in my own life that caused me to stop writing. Social media has become much more difficult to navigate and it is harder and harder to sort the wheat from the chaff and find the kind of stories worth sharing here. A bigger challenge: the overwhelming crue...