Skip to main content

Clip Show



October 21st. It occurs to me that, if I did not have a blog and an easy way to search it, I don’t think I’d remember all that much about my life and times. Let’s roll the footage, shall we? 

One year ago: One Hundred Years and Other Good News Warren’s Barbershop, solar panels at the library and other good stuff around town. 

Five years ago:  Pondering the typo-plagued campaign of Kim Klacik for Congress.  The Little Things 

Ten years ago: Keep Columbia Weird , inspired by an article entitled How to Keep [Your City] Weird by Kriston Capps 

Still relevant: 

Capps makes the case that preserving a community for the benefit of those who got there first is not only exclusionary, but also ultimately destructive to the health of the community overall. It makes housing more expensive. It keeps out the kind of "immigration" that brings diversity and life. Some notable quotes:

  • Picking character over people winds up hurting both.
  • Affordability is critical for a city that is both weird and chill.
  • Change sucks, but it’s better to live somewhere uncool than unfair.
  • To protect a city's character, residents need to welcome change.

And from 2011, the first year of the blog’s existence: All Politics is Local, the story of the time that then-County Executive Ken Ulman visited our neighborhood school. 

When I look back on October 21, 2025 - - what will I remember?

Well, two things are on my mind this morning.

  1. As soon as the County Executive Calvin Ball posted about National Bullying Prevention Month, the neighborhood troll made an appearance displaying textbook bullying behavior. (Insert eye roll here.)
  2. Group dynamics. I’m seeing a pattern in online groups that are populated predominantly by women. It goes something like this: One day an ambitious man turns up, sets up his (metaphorical) desk/ opens an office, and decides he’ll start running the thing. Its almost as though they find a well-functioning environment that appeals to them and think, “Horrors! What this place needs is a man!”
Au contraire. In many cases male participants are welcome. But: that online group you have your eye on is not looking for A Man in Charge. If the established dynamics are collaborative - - read the room, for heaven’s sake. If you are all about asserting dominance than you can’t possibly be about whatever the mission of the group is. But you will probably do some damage while you are there.

Sigh. I wonder what I will think about this in 2026.



Comments

Post a Comment

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more

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 ...
1 comment
Read more