A Second Chance - Oakland Mills and the New Columbia

Today, I happened to be lucky enough to experience something new.

My mother is one of the most active and vital supporters of Columbia, of her home village of Oakland mills, and of progress.  A lot of people look at progress in Columbia as the great specter of over-development and the (ever feared) traffic jam.  My mother sees progress as the re-vitalization of her village, as the happiness of my sister, a student at Talbott Springs, as the return of optimism and hope to a place that has been victim to stagnation and to, "that's how it has always been."  

My mother loves her neighborhood restaurant, the Second Chance Saloon.  Not so long ago, the Second Chance was the Last Chance (and how apt the names).  Now, this haven of Sunday sports, good beer, and quality food, is looking for more support - not only in the community but from without.  I love the Second Chance, too - I've been to all the cool new spots in Columbia, and only the Second Chance has staff and friends who know me and remember me.  I love beer and pub food; I love football and shuffleboard; I love friendly faces and good happy hours.  

Tonight, my mother and I went to ladies' pint night.  We got to sample quite a few beers, eat some I-need-bigger-pants onion rings, and sit at the same table with owners, waiters, and chefs.  Our opinions were important - as was our enjoyment.  Very few bars, from here to Philly to County Cork, could brag that they cared for their customers the way that the Second Chance does.  

My mother, her friend, and I.  Three attendees to a fabulous beer tasting.  The three only attendees.

I sat there, thinking.  If Frisco had such an event, it would be easily populated.  If Pub Dog had a beer tasting, I know I would be first in a very long line.  So what's going on, here?  Second Chance has it all - I most certainly have never had better snacks and drinks and company.  Why doesn't everyone go to the Second Chance and have good, local, honest craic?  

I know what people think about Oakland Mills.  People think ugly things.  "I would never go there after dark."  "If only there weren't so many apartments."  "I'm not one of those people."  Well, heck.  I grew up there.  I work there.  My sister goes to school there, and is getting a damned good education.  But people won't go into Oakland Mills - not even for 100 beers, onion rings, and faces so friendly that they seem like family.  I'm there a lot, and when I see kids on bikes, people in the grocery, and people on bar stools and eating dinner, the only thing I'm thinking is - this is my Columbia.  

I'm a pretty avid supporter of progress, myself.  My kind of progress means restaurants, beer, and music.  My kind of progress means going someplace where everybody knows your name.  My kind of progress means local, means honest, means open-arms and open-heart.  My kind of progress means supporting small business.  And I will not, I will not, discriminate based on economy or reputation or race.  Because, let's face it, that's pretty lame.  Is that what we want Columbia to be?  

I won't be a part of that - the easily excused narrow-mindedness.  But I will go to the Second Chance.  I'll go there for birthdays, graduation parties, a Little Lunch Music; I'll go there for beer tastings, for the very impressive bloody Mary bar, for football; and hell, I'll go there just to see some really awesome people who work hard and have fun.  I'll go there for the onion rings - as if the 100 beers couldn't tempt me!  And I'll go there because progress means having a good time.  

Progress, the New Columbia, means having real life experiences.  And it means finding pride in what is local.  And it means loving things without being bogged down by what neighborhood is better than another.  

Progress means sitting down with family, neighbors, waiters, owners, chefs - progress means sitting down with friends.  

Progress means breaking bread, cracking open a beer, and enjoying that golden diversity which is, after all, what Columbia is all about.     

World of Imagination

I have a very active imagination.

George and I went to the zoo in Baltimore today.  George had never been, and it was really neat to show him this place which holds so many memories for me.  It's not like it was when I was a kid - there are things that are the same, but the travel, the moving around, is a lot different.  No more prairie dogs at the entrance, no more pink flamingos, and most importantly, no more secret and unguarded entrance to the scum-soaked, dilapidated boat lake.  It's more limited now, and the feeling of getting lost in this maze of animals and of parkland is gone.

I remember going to the boat lake with my dad.  We walked around the green-tinged water, and stared off into the boat house, and we imagined what it must have been like - back then, you know, back then when the world was different and a little bit brighter.  The boat house looked as if it were about to fall apart with memories - dancing, picnicking, romance, and quite a lot of wood rot.  Dad and I talked and created the past like wisps of perfume, champagne, and elusive music.

The entrance of the lake was guarded by a white marble fountain, and I used to sit on the rough stone and think about dipping my feet into cool water.  This place was a secret.  This place was death-in-life, and it and its memories belonged to us.  Sweating, beating, soft-sweet-low, impressions of something gone and never to be recovered.

It's very easy for me to imagine the past.  I grew up with hundred year old transferware, and furniture to be perched upon, and pump organs, and choral music.  The past is a known quantity, in some ways - we have artifacts and treasures that give us something so full of dead passion and grace.  I can imagine the past because we, as a community, have lived it.

The future is a lot harder.  Technology beats its own drum, and things change in this uncontrollable way that is both inevitable and unbelievable.  I'd like to think that my life will continue in some known way - just like life is now, but a little different.

I feel like I'm missing something important when I think about Columbia, because when I look at the buildings I have nothing to imagine, or nothing I am capable of imagining.  That music isn't there - the scent of still waters.  We in Columbia are engaging in the practice of creating the future, and I don't quite know where I stand in that process.  I have no connection, no boat lake, no dancing with fireflies.  That doesn't mean that I won't have those things eventually.  New buildings become old, and my life becomes a part of someone else's imagination.

There's an incredible amount of love that comes from knowing the past.  I think I've mentioned identity before, and history creates identity in a lot of ways.  I don't know what it means to be a Columbian, because I don't feel I have an identity that is rooted in trees, parks, architecture, change, and the whispers of the past.  In Columbia, I don't have a boat lake.

But I want to.  I want to take my children, as my father took me, and tell stories of the imagination.  Someday this place will give me the gift of secrets, of antiquity, of the stark People Tree and still waters.

I love Baltimore, but I'm not giving up on my life here because I am determined to be a part of that thing, that soft thing, that means home.

The Real Columbia

A woman stands in the grass, the hem of her long cornflower skirt rustling, her dark skin soaking up sunlight.  She has black hair, fine and thick and curled, and a nose that seems to be a story in and of itself.

My fiance and I stop at the light on 175 and Snowden.  I stare at the woman - not at her face, but at what she has in her hands.  I look in my purse for money that I know isn't really there.  Her sign is simple - white with black block letters, and the words, "Please, in the love of God," make me hate myself and feel ashamed.

I hadn't really seen people beg on the streets in Columbia until the recession hit.  It hit hard.  I suddenly saw women - well-dressed, beautiful, mothers - with signs and hunger and bitterness and somehow still the desire, the strength, the need to protect their children.  Women you might meet at work, or at the dentist, or in Target.

Homelessness in Columbia is a shock to me - not because I'm shocked by poverty, having grown up in Baltimore and staring at the pavement and away from the desperation of urban life.  I'm shocked because I - perhaps like many others in Howard County - just don't think it could be true.  We're a community of suburbanites, yes?  Of minivans.  Of good schools and government jobs and computer programming.  How can poverty happen here?

It happens.  I see it, and working in the school system I saw it, and I felt the floor open up under me as my outdated delusions of 'burbhood became irrelevant.  We do not live in paradise.  Maybe some of us do - maybe there are people in Columbia who are living the magical and, to most, unobtainable dream of being financially secure, but I think that there aren't as many of those people as we are supposed to believe.

Columbia was an idea, a vision of intermingling, of wholeness, many races, many religions, and true happiness like marshmallow on a snowball.  But we don't really see it that way - at least not now.  We're trained not to see or not to accept the differences.  The "I don't have enough," or the, "I have too much;" the "I don't speak English," and the, "I think you should;" the "I need help," and the, "Stare at the pavement."  I've lived in Columbia since I was twelve, and it took me at least ten years to realize that there is so much disparity in this community of blind-eyed, candy-coated idealism.

I'm not trashing the original concept of this planned community.  I want us to be multi-ethnic, to have different jobs and names and village centers and identities.  That's great.  That's what a city is.

What I'm questioning is this - why did it take so long?  Why didn't I see before that there are differences in the lives of Columbians, and that we're all not doing enough to be good neighbors?

Why didn't I see that this place is turning into a city?  We've got poverty, and homelessness, and I (so help me) look in my purse because I can't face what's right in front of me.  Columbia is changing, and I think that instead of closing my eyes and maintaining the peace of a child with fingers in its ears, I should look up and say, this is what change means.  Instead of calling for new restaurants and theatres and the glitz of urbanity, maybe I should look up at the beautiful woman, for the love of God, and become a citizen of the real Columbia.       

The Storm

We've just experienced a terrible storm - the kind that makes you think you're going to see Dorothy, and it's not even Pride weekend yet.  Up on the third floor, in our condo, the trees have bent nearly sideways, coniferous fronds dancing violently against the siding.  It's black - the sun hasn't gone down yet, but it seems like the night will go on and on, tossed into dark with the swift crack of hail and the sharp call of sirens.

A storm.  A storm that breaks the oppressive heat.  A storm that makes me think that the world is about to be reborn, pale, naked, and twilight purple.

After the rain comes a bright, strident note - birdsong.  It's like dawn.  I asked George where the birds hid when it rained and we thought that some might fly into it and some might cling to the inner branches of the big pine trees.

The world is changed.  More sirens, more noise, and a shocking quiet like the night about to breathe.

I think that this place, Columbia, must be like that.  Some things need to be broken down into their most fundamental parts - branches and leaves and birdsong - in order to be stitched together into a whole.  I've met people who've lived here their whole lives, and they tell me that change is good - unless there's too much traffic, or not enough parking, or too much development.  I've also met people who are eager for something to break, some great dam bursting forth with promise and wildness.

Plans are made.  Trees are cut down.  Buildings go up.  And I'm looking toward the future, afraid of the storm, and looking into it - looking to something that I can't possibly know, can't imagine.

I can see why that might be scary, especially to those who have known this Columbia for so long, and who see the storm of change as something purely destructive.  And yes, it can be scary - after all, when I'm driving from my condo to my mother's house, I mourn the trees on Oakland Mills that have given way to what I can hardly believe will be "park land."

But I need that storm of change; I, who miss living in the city, who love this school system, who need open air, who need dancing and late nights and art galleries and yes, even that, even the occasional traffic jam.

It's so dark now that the doors to our porch are like golden mirrors in the lamp light.  I don't know what tomorrow's going to look like - if it's going to be hot and hellish like today, with sweaty teachers and children and parents, or if it's going to be cool-blissful as I think June should be.

Either way, I can't be afraid of the change.  I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and be in a world I know not, and I need to be ready.    

After the Change

Long story short - I'm not a HouseHon anymore, and I don't quite know what that means for my "online persona."  Such as it is!

My current, full-time job fills me with such joy.  I'm working with kids, and I'm learning so much, and I'm absolutely in love with my days.  And G, my fantastic fiance, has been away for work, which means I've been living with my Mom (my brilliant blogger).

I started this blog because I had something to say about my life as a part-time employee and full-time HouseHon. Now, I feel I have a lot to say about other things.  I have a lot to say about being with kids and being surprised and delighted by them.  I have a lot to say about learning how to be in a couple.  And I have a lot, a whole lot, to say about being a big sister.  

In the past week and a half, I have worked on pints and quarts, pictographs, checks and balances, and patience.  At home, I've been watching Disney programming for my ever-too-grown-up super sassy sis.  I've been photographing fashion shows and giggling about boys.  And frankly, this new life makes my in-between stuckness seem - seem, well, ages ago.  Done.  And there is a little part of me - I guess, somewhere, I'm mourning it.

Again, I have to remind myself to return to HoCo.  Well, here it is -- I work in a wonderful school.  These kids are so endearingly sweet and so supremely challenging, and it all happens because I work in Howard County.  What I do would not be the same if I did it somewhere else.  Recently, I attended an event at which the students showed off their own work, and I was stunned by the amount of passion and fun that came with good teaching and great support.  I'm amazed by my colleagues and mentors, and by my students, and by their parents.

And yes, I miss painting my toenails, watching re-runs, and doing dishes.  But when I was doing those things, I was missing a little, aching part of myself that knew that being a teacher was what I really wanted to do.  What I want to do.  I want to do it here, in Howard County, in this home after Baltimore, in this place of grass and no sidewalks and no real downtown.  And that - that's why I'm a HoCo - a HouseHon, a para, a sister, a daughter, and a woman about to get married and make a life.

'Cause if these are the kids that are raised here, I couldn't do better.  

Ch-ch-ch-ch---- you get the idea...

As the above title suggests, things have been changing in househon land.

My househon status may now be in question, somewhat.  I have applied for and received a new job, working in the HoCo public school system.  I start next Tuesday, and along with my elation for a full time job, I am also a bit nervous.  Full time work, plus cleaning, plus cooking and meal planning, plus my dance job - all I can say, is, welcome to being a grownup.

All this aside, I am enjoying the lovely weather in typical me fashion, with an iced mocha (espresso from my Nespresso Pixie and chocolate soy milk, ultimate indulgence), Glen Miller, and cooking.  My current projects are meatballs and a roasted chicken - a little later I will be roasting corn on the cob in the oven.

A lot of people do the "engagement chicken" recipe - a concept which I find hilarious.  I, myself, tend to call that the "stick a lemon up its butt" method!  While this is tasty, if not matrimony-inducing, I tend to favor garlic and butter in my chicken.  Here's the tried and true roaster recipe:

Large roasting chicken
As much minced garlic as you like
3/4 stick butter, divided
1/2-1 teaspoon salt
Pepper, to taste
Bay leaves
Assorted stuffing (like onion or shallots - can also be the aforementioned lemon)

1.  Rinse chicken and remove innards.  These can be used for broth - just let them simmer away with carrot and celery and herbs.  Place chicken in large roasting pan.

2.  Take divided butter and place under the skin of the chicken, as well as in the creases of the legs and wings.  Next, rub salt, pepper, and garlic over the chicken.

3.  Stuff the chicken with your favorite stuffin's.  I really like shallots for this (tender and subtle).

4.  Roast the chicken at 375 for 20 minutes per pound.  Aaaaaand you're done.


The corn can be done at the same temperature for 20-25 minutes.  Just peel back the husk, remove silk, pre-season the corn, then peel the husks back over.  Before roasting, dunk the corn in cold water so that the husks don't burn.  Simply done!

Meatballs, too, are fool-proof.  A little garlic, oregano, salt, and one egg per pound of raw meat - cook them up in some olive oil and pureed tomato and you've got something you can stash in the fridge for pasta and marinara, meatball subs, or even a high-protein and portion controlled snack.  (In fact, I just nabbed one - not bad!)

So, cooking and facing the future - that's what I'm up to on this beautiful spring day.  Also, I cannot tell a lie, reading a romance novel.

But here's my question - one that, I am sure, has been asked by many: how can I be a househon, and a workinghon, too?

Hump Day

Well, tonight's the big Hocoblogs party at the Stained Glass Pub.  I have attended a few of these parties in the past as a reader, but it will be fun to go as a writer.  My wonderful mother, a blog follower and online socialite, will be joining me.  Always good to have a night out on the town with Mom!

Other tasks of import today include cleaning and doing laundry.  I ask you, why can't I just do those things once and have them finished forever?  Gee.

Last night I made Cajun shrimp and rice.  Good news: a very inexpensive dish comprised of frozen peppers ($1 a bag), an onion ($2.99 for a large bag), shrimp (on sale), and rice (from my gigantic bag of Basmati that I bought for $5).  Bad news: I followed a recipe and it was fairly flavorless.  Spicy, yes.  But lacking that certain something - probably bacon!  Everything is better with bacon...

I feel like I've been trying to follow recipes lately, which is almost always a mistake.  I made curried chicken last week from a recipe, and while it was delicious and smelled like House of India it just didn't do it for me.  No improvisation means no adventure!  No risk-taking!  I'm making chicken kabobs this weekend - a chance to experiment and reclaim my creative oomph.

Well, I'm off to see the wizard (otherwise known as the magical mystery washing machine).  See you tonight?