Every other Friday, for over two years now, Dave Bittner, Paul Skalny and I have gathered for lunch followed by a podcast. This biweekly routine has developed its own little rhythm and rituals. Since I was on vacation on our normally scheduled podcast day last week, we simply moved it to Monday.
Monday has a much different vibe than Friday, particularly at The Mall where we tape the show. It’s less crowded and easier to park. Getting a decent table at the Nordstrom café is no problem on Monday. On Friday we have to arrive before noon in order to secure good lunch time real estate.
The day change didn’t seem to affect the show vibe though. Once we got underway it was just like another Friday, only with a little less background noise.
Our guest this week was Dr. Calvin Ball, the county council member representing District 2. Calvin is good guy with a decent sense of humor. This makes discussing hot button political topics like school board diversity easy. We had lively discussions about the school board, councilmanic redistricting, and the General Assembly taxing frenzy, without anyone getting all riled up.
I pointed out to Calvin that I had received spring fundraising invites from Courtney Watson and Ken Ulman but not from him. He said he had been too busy to think about that right now. Imagine that, a poltico too busy to think about fundraising!
We also talked briefly about some recent crime news; the mall robberies, the University of Maryland student from HoCo who threatened to go on a shooting rampage and the Howard High School
You can listen to the latest episode of “and then there’s that…” here.
