Skip to main content

Thursday’s Top Five


 

Someone in Columbia Hills* has reduced the concept of a treehouse to its most essential elements and I can’t tell if it’s adorable or creepy. I think it might need chicken legs.



Question of the day for the cognoscenti: why is a place called Columbia Hills located in Ellicott City?


The Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services is again recruiting adopters for fire hydrants.  A worthy endeavor. But, if they’re not going to let folks paint, decorate, and adorn them with googly eyes I’m not ready to jump at the opportunity. Yet.



If you are old enough to remember the television game show Supermarket Sweep, you might be interested in the anniversary celebration for the Columbia Grocery Outlet in (vibrant) Wilde Lake. Check the image below for what they are planning for their big day: November 22nd. You can enter for a chance to win a 2-minute shopping spree! 




A graduate of Centennial High School makes music on Saturday Night Live. I’m looking forward to learning more about Dijon Duenas.


Dijon Duenas, from Wikipedia


Also, AI is not your friend.



In hyperlocal news, Saturday we put out this year’s attempt at a critter-proof bird feeder. Yesterday - - Wednesday - - the birds discovered it and figured out how to use it. 




Have a wonderful Thursday. 


Village Green/Town² Comments 


*Bonus trivia content: Google presented me with Columbia Hills references in Ellicott City, Arlington VA,  Columbia Station, Ohio, and…Mars? 

Comments

  1. Julia A. McCreadyNovember 20, 2025 at 4:24 AM

    Please do not submit comments here. This function will be disabled shortly. Use the link above instead. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete

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