Happy Independence Day

Today marks the 236^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s a day to celebrate American democracy. To that end I share a quote from the man often referred to as the father of our country.

“Party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day, while the great and accumulated debt, ruined finances, depreciated money and want of credit were postponed from day to day, from week to week, as if our affairs wore the most promising aspect.”

Although that was written by George Washington in 1778 during the Revolutionary War, it sounds very familiar today. For those who lament that modern politics in America has denigrated into placing personal agendas over the national good, you should take heart that this is something that has plagued our democracy from the git go.

Here’s hoping everyone can toss aside politics for the day, and celebrate the fact that even after 236 years of this stuff, our country endures in spite of ourselves.

Down in the Hole

Our recent weather event has once again raised cries for burying all power lines. Even here at To2C, readers have chimed in on the issue.

It has also again highlighted the longstanding Columbia/Ellicott City divide. In some recent casual conversations I've detected a hint of  an infrastructure superiority complex among some Columbians. Columbia, of course, was a pioneer in the burying of power lines forty five years ago. As a result, Columbia in general, suffered fewer power outages than the rest of HoCo, percentage wise anyway.

That being said, there were still power outages in Columbia. The infrastructure is only as strong as its weakest point which occurs in and all around Columbia. This is also true in Ellicott City. In the newer developments, including my own neighborhood, all of the power lines are buried. The problem is that they are connected to the old parts where the wires are hung on poles, the aforementioned weak link. In Ellicott City the old parts occupy a larger geographical area than the new parts.

 Whether or not to just go ahead and bury everything everywhere has been battered around for some time now. According to this story by Mike DeBonis in The Washington Post, “In 2005, the Maryland Public Service Commission studied whether creating a statewide system of underground lines would be wise. The group concluded that building such a system would be too expensive, …”

There also seems to be a question as to whether it is even worth it.

“A 2009 report from the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association for public utilities, said data show that underground systems have “only a slightly better reliability performance” than above-ground systems.”

Then again, if you just measured the performance of underground power lines in times of storms like last Fridays, putting the power in the hole wins hands down.

“Pepco said in a 2008 report that outages involving overhead wires took 2.8 hours to repair, while the average outage involving underground equipment took 4.4 hours. But during and after storm events, the calculation changed: Above-ground equipment took an average of 8.2 hours to repair, “while there were no [underground] storm related failures for comparison.”

And then there’s that…

Three Days, No Donuts

As HoCo headed to normalcy this morning, signs of the disruptions caused by Friday nights “super derecho” storm were still evident.

The Dunkin Donuts on Montgomery Road in Ellicott City was open for coffee but had no donuts for dunkin’. The store lost power on Friday and didn’t get it back until late yesterday making it one of the storms losers.

The winners were mostly next door in Columbia. Overall Columbia appears to have fared much better than Ellicott City. Yesterday I took Mama Wordbones to visit Wegmans for the first time and it seemed as if half of HoCo was in the store. One of the employees by the sushi bar told me that the store never lost power and that they'd been "crushed" all weekend.

It was a different story on Main Street in Ellicott City. Instead of the usual summer weekend crowds the historic district was largely empty as shops closed due to lack of power. When I drove through the old mill town on Saturday morning, restaurants were scrambling to preserve their perishables. I spotted this crew moving food from Tersiguel's to a refrigerated truck while a generator droned in front of Scoop Ahh Dee Doo.

As Ian Shapira wrote in this story in The Washington Post, “Natural disasters have a natural way of doing this. They mysteriously transform some people into the haves and the people next door into have-nots.”

In this particular storm, it appears that Columbia was the haves, and EC was the have-nots.

Our Broadband Brother

Say what you will about Ken Ulman as a politician but somewhere under that public persona there resides just another smart kid who grew up here. While he works to adopt a more regional leadership image, his roots were here and always will be. His HoCo loco fans will celebrate that fact while his HoCo loco foes will apologize for it. Love him or hate him he’s still our guy.

We decided to jump right in with the exec instead of waiting for to formally bring him in after the news recap. It didn’t take long for him to chide me for making light of the marble attack on the speed cam van. “Thankfully no one was hurt,” he pointed out soberly countering my reckless sarcasm.

Of course he was right. Until Friday’s show I hadn’t realized that those vans were manned, more often than not according to the exec. Somebody could get hurt.

Still, I contend that the story of the fifty year old guy arrested for firing marbles at a HoCo speed van is pretty funny stuff and fair game for humor. I’m also glad no one got hurt because then it wouldn’t be funny.

As it happens sometimes, we only got to cover about half the stuff we had on our list to talk about. On the other hand we still managed to cover election cycles, the school board, the Affordable Care Act, the Downtown Partnership triumphs and travails and the statewide broadband initiative.

According to Ken the first fiber on the network has already been lit linking UMBC main campus in Catonsville with their new Training Center in Columbia Gateway. The One Maryland Inter-County Broadband Network (ICBN) may prove to be the single most important public infrastructure project in Maryland since the advent of the railroad. The bottom line is that Ken and Ira Levy, his cyber guru, made this happen. Nice job.

You can listen to the 69^th episode of “and then there’s that…” here. 

Powerless

We were among the 800,000 or so people in Maryland who lost power late Friday night as a result of a storm that appeared to catch meteorologists and power company executives by surprise.

Our power was finally restored this morning around eleven. I had just picked up two bags of free ice from Harris Teeter in Kings Contrivance when Mama Wordbones called with the news that the juice was flowing again. I was grateful. Spending another day of scorching heat trying to keep our house cool and our food from becoming spoiled was not my idea of a fun way to spend a weekend. Thankfully, our home has a finished basement which remained cool while the rest of the house baked and that’s where we ending up sleeping last night.

Now, with our power restored and the a/c cranking out cool air again, I thought I'd share a couple of observations.

Gadgets

No power means living on borrowed time for eReaders, iPads, and smartphones. My Nook held on until this morning before it died. My iPad, forced to rely on a 3G network, was only a little more useful than a paperweight. I kept my smartphone alive by greatly curtailing its use along with periodic infusions of juice from the car battery.

Fortunately, I still receive regular newspaper delivery so I didn’t need to rely on digital devices to find out what was going on in the world.

Food

Yesterday morning, as we were being warned that the outage could last for days, Mama Wordbones took on the role of refrigerator cop. Thanks to her efforts we didn’t lose any food. I think we opened the fridge a total of three times yesterday. Instead of going out for dinner last night, we ate what was most at risk for spoiling, using the gas grill for cooking and dining in the cool basement.

Community

It was thanks to Courtney Watsons Twitter feed that I learned about the free ice at Harris Teeter this morning. I also learned that CA had opened all of its pools to HoCo residents without power who needed to cool off. A wag of the Wordbones tail goes out to all that have helped their powerless neighbors cope during this emergency.

Advisory Overload

While taping our podcast today I quipped with the exec that the proposed advisory board for the new Downtown Columbia Partnership includes everybody but Santa Claus. In order to mollify criticism that the partnership board vests too much control in the hands of the Howard Hughes Corporation, the county council is considering eleven amendments to the enabling legislation that includes the addition of an eleven member advisory board. According to this story by Lindsey McPherson in Explore Howard, the advisory board “would be allowed to attend the Board of Directors meetings.”

“The amendment specifies that a representative of the advisory committee must be provided with an opportunity to comment on all matters pending before the board. It also authorizes the advisory committee to examine the partnership's books and records "at any reasonable time."

Though the advisory board members will be able to comment and examine to their hearts delight, their influence is limited to an advisory role with no voting power. In other words it’s basically window dressing meant to appease those who fear giving HHC too much say in how the partnership is run.

That fear is misplaced. Over the course of the next thirty years or so, HHC will be expending tens of millions to remake Columbia Town Center and the partnerships role is "to be the entity conducting marketing, maintenance, security, transportation and other services in downtown Columbia." It is in the companies’ best interests as the master developer to see that the project is done right.

As the largest developer of master planned communities in the United States I don’t think they really need an overloaded advisory board to accomplish the task but it looks like they're going to get one anyway.

A Bounty of Bags

People send me stuff. Most of the time it is simply tips for blog posts but every once awhile they send me actual stuff. Today I received three reusable shopping bags.

Last Sunday in this post, I made a light hearted jab at Joan Lancos for disqualifying me from receiving a yellow Columbia Villages bag because I wasn't a resident of Columbia. Today she sent me two along with a note apologizing for the slight and hoping that “this incident won’t prevent you from saying nice things about us in the future.”

I should note here that Joan and I both share a fond appreciation for sarcasm.

I also got a Baggu from Mickey Gomez, the Executive Director of the Volunteer Center of Howard County. I suppose Mickey read about the yellow bag incident and decided to send me one of her bags, a nice little fold up number.

Thank you, Mickey and Joan. You both get a wag of the Wordbones tail for the smiles I got when I opened my mail today.

This Could Get Interesting…And Expensive

The news today that Allan Kittleman was cranking up his political machinery for a run at county exec in 2014 came as a welcome surprise. It has long been known that he was interested in the job and now he’s become the first of the top three, or four, to lay the gauntlet down, sort of. According to this story by Lindsey McPherson in Explore Howard, the state senator told guests at a breakfast fundraiser that “we are putting an organization together to anticipate we will be moving for county executive in 2014.”

The news was greeted with reserve by his rivals. Courtney Watson told Lindsey that “it's too early to discuss a race still more than two years away.”

Okay, right. If you don’t know that Courtney plans to run for county executive in 2014 then you aren’t paying very close attention. Next to school board member Brian Meshkin’s business troubles on the West Coast, it’s the worst kept secret in HoCo.

Guy Guzzone, on the other hand, at least admitted that he’s working on the makings of a run for the top HoCo job. "I am putting together the necessary pieces to make sure that option is open to me," he said.”

I think “putting together the necessary pieces” means the same thing as “putting an organization together” in HoCo loco politico speak.

Allan has the most to gain by getting out early in this race. Despite the inherent disadvantage of being a Repub in a predominately Dem county, he is either the third out of three or the fourth out of four in fundraising as near as I can tell.

The top dog with dollars is Guy. For some reason many of the candidates 2012 Annual Campaign Reports are not yet available online so I used 2011 numbers when comparing the campaign war chests of the top three, or four. In 2011 Guy reported having $100,274 in cash on hand. Courtney had $31,785 and Alan had $20,188. Interestingly, Calvin Ball had $40,847. I know it sounds crazy but if Courtney and Guy decide to duke it out in a Dem primary, Calvin could justify jumping into that fight too.

Despite Professor Cools detached demeanor towards further political ambitions, his bank account makes him a playa.

The bottom line is that all four of these front runners are good candidates for the job. We are fortunate for that but it will also make decisions of who to support all the more gut wrenching…and expensive.

During this season of non declared campaigning, at least three of the four will be ramping up the fundraising breakfasts, lunches, cocktail receptions, and family picnics. Tickets will run from twenty some bucks to a couple hundred some bucks and many us will attend events for each of them, not necessarily because we plan to eventually vote for them but simply because we know them and like them.

So while this is getting interesting it is also going to get expensive for some of us anyway, especially when you consider that our county exec is running for governor. (Tell me you knew about that, right?)

Such is the price we pay for a healthy HoCo loco democracy.

Before Mini There Was Morris

Before there was the Fiat 500, the Smart Car and the Mini, there was the VW Beetle, the Citroen 2CV, and the Morris Minor 1000. I spotted this 1969 Morris at the Old Mill Bakery Café just outside Ellicott City last Sunday.

Much like the Ford pickup I wrote about in this post, what I liked about this car was that it is not a showpiece driven only on Sundays and other special occasions. Judging from its condition, this car appears to still be in regular service and in fairly good shape considering.

The Morris was built by BMC, better known for producing the MGB and the MG Midget. According to this report on Epinions, “cars built by BMC shared a large number of parts so availability of them is still an easy and economical affair.”

“Finding and nurturing a Morris Minor 1000 through 21st century life could be a rewarding and enjoyable experience. Still viable on today’s roads, more economical to operate than some new economy cars, and easily restored, a Morris Minor 1000 might be the best answer to a new Mini or Smart Car purchase.”

You just have to get used to driving on the right.

What He Said

Though some folks may look down their noses at loco bloggers as nothing more than nattering nabobs, at least one of us backs his words with a call for direct action.

For the third time in less than two years, Tom Coale, the author of HoCo Rising, has harnessed his blog energy to rally support for the HoCo loco homeless. Last year, thanks to a fundraising campaign he spearheaded on his blog, over $3,000 was raised for Grassroots enabling the loco charity to establish a sober house in the county.

Now he’s at it again. Yesterday Tom began a new campaign to raise $2,300 for Living in Recovery in order that they may open a second sober house.

I have often said that it is the readers who make loco blogging so rewarding and Tom’s efforts shown just how rewarding that can be. The loco blog readers have shown that they are not just interested in reading and commenting on loco stuff, they are also committed to fixing stuff. As he wrote in this post, the loco blog reader is “not satisfied to watch public need and chat about it with removed fascination.  We do things.” 

Indeed.

If you haven’t done so already, you can learn more and help make a difference here.

“Like Eating a Fat Angel”

Last night I took Peanut to the relatively new “Scoop Ahh Dee Doo" ice cream stand in Ellicott City. Earlier last week I sampled their frozen confections for the first time and was blown away by a flavor called Honey Graham. It was just like graham crackers only ice cream, if that makes any sense.

Peanut decided to try one of her favorite flavors, strawberry. After only a few bites she declared that it was the best strawberry ice cream she’d ever had. “It’s like eating a fat angel,” she said.

I’m not sure exactly where that expression came from but I took it to be high praise.

I was tempted to try the Berger Cookie flavor but the Honey Graham so good the first time I decided to get it again.

The ice cream comes from the Taharka Brothers Homemade Ice Cream Company in Baltimore. The company and its founders were the subject of this story by Dick Gordon on American Public Media. It’s worth a listen and makes the delicious ice cream all the more enticing.

The setting is pretty terrific too. Peanut and I took our ice cream over to a bench by the river and soaked in the summer evening while listening to the water cascading over the rocks just below us. It was just like eating a fat angel.

We’re heading down there again tonight. I've been thinking about that Berger Cookie flavor all day.

Birthday Town

It is somewhat unfortunate that Columbia’s forty fifth birthday celebration had to fall on the weekend after LakeFest. The temptation to unfavorably compare the two events is almost too great.

It would also be unfair.

Columbia’s birthday party is more hyper loco than the regionally marketed LakeFest. This was bought home to me almost as soon as I arrived. Passing by the Columbia Villages booth, Joan Lancos started to hand me a Columbia Villages reusable shopping bag but then pulled back explaining “You don’t live in Columbia do you?”

I’m a Columbia expat. No yellow shopping bag for me.

Despite the shopping bag stiff I lingered for awhile talking loco politico stuff with Joan long enough to eventually elicit an audible sigh from Peanut. We moved on, without a yellow shopping bag.

Passing in front of Clyde’s I showed Peanut the brick I bought her. I don’t think it made that great of an impression with her. Perhaps she’ll grow more comfortable with the whole brick thing over time. 

As we were inspecting the decorated umbrellas lined up along the dock, a couple came by with a young golden retriever, named Dakota. The owner (I believe her name was Claire) asked me if I was a blogger. I pleaded guilty and she proceeded to tell me that she is a regular reader. “I’m a lurker though,” she said, “not a commenter.”

I immediately liked her. The fact that she and husband had a sweet golden retriever only made it better.  I thanked her for recognizing me and being a reader. That is one the best parts of hyper loco blogging for me, random encounters with HoCo locos that I otherwise may have never met.

After taking our aforementioned paddle boat ride, we headed up to the main stage area when a Tae Kwon Do demonstration was about to take place. “This is something that really interests me,” Peanut informs me.

Who knew?

As we settled in to watch I noticed a young couple had found themselves a private perch to watch the show. I wondered how long it would be before someone told them to get down. It was approximately fifteen minutes. Still, for the moment they were getting away with it, it made a perfect summer picture.

As we left, I grabbed one of the available Sharpies and penned my birthday greetings to Columbia on the birthday cake replica set up for this purpose. I may no longer qualify for a free yellow shopping bag but I still love my old hometown all the same. Happy 45th!

The Boats Are Back

Yesterday, as Peanut and I were checking out the Columbia birthday festivities, I noticed a familiar site had returned to the Town Center lakefront…paddle boats.

As it turns out, yesterday was opening day for the new paddle boat concessionaire, Capital River Cruises. After a brief chat with boat attendants Mick and Ryan, we decided to take one out for a spin.

It was a nice day for getting back out on Lake Kittamaqundi again.

Trouble in Paradise

You might think that,with the long awaited and much debated Columbia Town Center redevelopment process finally underway, the county council would be celebrating their accomplishment and working to move things forward as smoothly as possible.

Hardly. Last night, two of the council members got fairly testy with the developer over what appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding of business , capital and risk. 

In a work session on the enabling legislation for a new Commercial  District Management Authority (CDMA) for Town Center, tempers were raised and threats were implied over the issue of who will control this authority. As it has been proposed by the exec, the Downtown Columbia Partnership would be governed by a board of seven members, four of whom would be from the Howard Hughes Corporation, giving HHC majority control.

Jen Terrasa and Calvin Ball seem to think that's a bit too much. They expressed a certain discomfort with allowing a developer to have so much control over the Town Center redevelopment program, even though it isn't the county's money at risk. 

This is a potential deal killer for HHC.

They are the ones putting real money into Downtown Columbia Partnership, both in new commercial development fees and in funding public amenities. In addition to immediately stroking a check for $1.5 million for affordable housing, HHC will be funding the renovation of Merriweather and a variety of transportation and environmental initiatives. Estimates of their total investment in Town Center runs into the tens of millions.

Of course they want to control the authority, at least initially. They are the only ones with real skin in the game. As John DeWolf told the council, HHC is still committed to the project as long as they can manage the risk. He further suggested that they are uniquely qualified to accomplish that. He wryly pointed out that when HHC took over this project “there wasn’t anyone else lined up outside the door to buy this (Town Center redevelopment) separately.”

Greg Fox and Courtney Watson seemed to get that. They attempted to get their council colleagues to give HHC some sort of reassurance that they’d work this out. HHC is up against some critical dates in the development process and needs to have this resolved sooner rather than later. Calvin and Jen balked. Mary Kay Sigaty, the current council chair, was silent.

Two out of five, not good. Trouble in Paradise.

The Wire to Go

I realize I’m a little late to the partyon this but I’ve finally gotten around to watching The Wire. I really don’t like coming into the middle of a series and trying to get in sync with the seasons by using On Demand was too much brain damage.

Then my neighbor Peter told me about HBO Go. I love HBO Go. I now can start at the beginning of any of their series (Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Deadwood, and The Wire of course) and keep going right up to the latest episodes, if any.

I also love The Wire. What’s not to love? It’s all about the city of my birth, B-more. It’s not pretty but neither is life in the big city sometimes. More than anything it’s familiar. The scenes from the city make the story all the more real for me not to mention the fact that the scenes from inside the Major Crimes unit offices were likely all filmed in HoCo. I’ve spotted our former guv in at least two episodes and the mayor in the series is inspired by the current guvs stint as mayor.

The episode openings are one of my favorite parts. While the opening credits roll, the blues song “Way Down in the Hole,” plays in the background. Each season a different artist performed the song. In Season 1 it was The Blind Boys of Alabama, Season 2, Tom Waits, Season 3, The Neville Brothers, Season 4, DoMaJe, and Season 5, Steve Earle.

I’m in the fifth and final season now. These episodes start with Steve Earle’s version. Looking back on the previous four seasons I've started thinking about which version I like the best. It's pretty interesting what the five separate artists do with the same song. I think Steve Earle’s take on "Hole" is my second favorite.

Picking my favorite is harder. I really like the harmonica in The Blind Boys version and DoMaJe’s version sounds like is being sung in a dark smoky bar. The Neville Brothers version on the other hand has an industrial feel.

At the end of the day I’ve decided I like the way Tom Waits brings it best. He also wrote the song.

Anyone else wanna share their favorite?

Good Show for a No Show

In the two plus years since we started, we’ve had every member of the county council on our podcast except Jen Terrasa. It’s not like we haven’t tried. Our latest attempt was for the show we taped this past Monday. At least two weeks prior we reached out to her and she indicated that she was interested in joining us but demurred from making an actual commitment. She told us she’s get back to us.

As late as Wednesday last week she still hadn’t gotten back to us. We were running out of time. It was four days before the show and we didn’t know if we had a guest or not. That night I attended her fundraiser at Kings Contrivance and when I got a moment to speak with her I asked again if she was coming on the show.

“Can I let you know tomorrow?” she asked.

"Sure, but please let us know by then so we can make other plans if you can't do it." I replied.

She never did. Maybe she just  didn’t like what I wrote about her party.

Thankfully, on short notice we were able to get the Programming Manager for the Columbia Festival of the Arts, Josh Stoltzfus. Josh is the guy who lines up the entertainment for the ten day festival, including Lake Fest. He’s the guy who bought Marching Fourth to the Columbia lakefront and he wanted us to know about the rest of the festival lineup. It’s a pretty impressive lineup including Rosanne Cash, The Flying Karamozov Brothers and Momix, all within the intimate confines of the Rouse Theatre.

It turned out to be a pretty fun show and probably a lot more interesting than talking about HoCo loco zoning and land use with Jen. 

You can listen to the 68^th episode of “and then there’s that…” here.  

Right at Home

Last night, as I passed through Ellicott City, I spotted this 1961 Ford pickup parked across from the Phoenix Emporium. Though unremarkable in terms of restoration, it caught my attention from a historic perspective.

In 1961 a pickup truck just like this would have been a familiar sight on Main Street. In that pre-Columbia period HoCo was largely an agrarian county and EC was the center of commerce. In those days E.T. Clarkes Hardware was next door to the Phoenix.

When I take a picture of an interesting auto for To2C, I always make some attempt to find the owner. Since it was parked directly across the street from the bar I thought this would be as good a place as any to make an inquiry. I enlisted the aid of Ashley, the bartender, who in turn asked the other patrons at the bar. She came up blank. I spoke with John the bouncer too. He hadn't seen the truck yet and went to the door to check it out.

“Not a very good paint job,” John observed. It turns out that John is a bit of a car guy himself and we talked cars while I finished my beer.

Considering that the truck is over fifty years old, I’d have to say that its paint job is more than serviceable. It doesn’t look like a showpiece. It just looks right at home.

Dinner for Two, Under Ten Bucks

Yesterday my colleague TW paraphrased Yogi Berra in describing the new Columbia Wegmans store. “It’s so busy that nobody is going to go there,” he commented after seeing the queue of cars waiting to get into the parking garage. He opted to take a pass.

I had a decidedly different experience less than an hour later. The store was still busy but the traffic was moving and I was immediately directed into a convenient parking space by a helpful Wegmans employee.

Though I did have a couple of items on my grocery list this trip was really to just to check the place out. Prior to this visit, the only other Wegmans I had been in was their store in Hunt Valley.

The Columbia Wegmans is nicer. For one thing, Hunt Valley doesn’t have outdoor seating for the café.

Though I wasn’t intending to pick up dinner, a pass through the Market Café soon changed my mind. I picked up a pound of Italian sausage with peppers and onions and half pound of Kansas City rice for $9.53. It was plenty of food for two people.

It occurred to me that it’s not only the existing grocery stores that should be concerned about this new competitor. Wegmans could alter the paradigm of the HoCo loco carry-out business as well. Why settle for pizza when, for the same amount of money, you can get Tuscan ribs or Etruscan salmon?

On my way out the door I stopped to check out the grocery cart escalator. I had read that it had broken down on opening day so I wasn’t surprised to see an employee stationed at the foot of the escalator helping customers acclimate to this new technology. It seemed to be working just fine.

“It was only down for about a half hour on opening day,” the cart guy told me. That apparently was just long enough to get the attention of the Explore Howard reporter, Pete Pichaske

Back By Popular Demand

Last year, when the Marching Fourth Marching Band appeared at the Columbia Festival of Arts LakeFest, they proved to be so popular that the festival invited them back.

I was happy to hear this because I missed last years performance. That night Mama Wordbones and I attended the performance of "A Midsummer’s Night Dream" at Shakespeare in the Ruins instead. 

As it turns out I almost missed them again because of my college reunion. Fortunately, this year the festival made the Portland based performance troupe their closing performance. After getting home and unpacking yesterday, I headed over to Town Center to catch the show.

The March Fourth Marching Band is a perfect fit for a summer festival. Their high energy show is infectious and last night, in very short order, they had the audience dancing and waving arms. You can’t help but smile when you hear them perform.

I’m just glad I finally got to see them.

Reunion Weekend

When I informed a colleague that I was traveling to Cleveland this weekend to attend my 35^th college reunion I was met with a half smile and a quizzical look that said “really?”

Really.

Like graduations, spring is also a time for college reunions. I understand that reunion programs can vary widely from school to school, particularly in the larger ones but when it comes to hosting a reunion weekend, my little alma mater does a pretty bang up job.

I haven’t attended every reunion in our quinquennium reunion cycle, but I’ve been to more than a few and I’ve always had a great time. Not only do I reconnect with old classmates, I also get to interact with other generations that passed through the same halls and grounds on their way to adulthood. We share a common bond from a formative time of our lives that allows us to relate to each other across the decades that separate us. 

This year the oldest class in attendance at my reunion was the Class of 57. The initiates to our five year tribal gathering were the Class of 2007. Like my own clan did thirty years ago, the twentysomethings kept the party going until the wee hours of the morning.  At the other end of continuum, the thinning ranks of classes older than ’57 were consolidated into a “golden” group. The oldest registered attendee was from the class of 1936.

This morning, in the courtesy shuttle back to the airport, four generations of alumni were represented. There was a guy from Los Angeles from the Class of 1962, a couple from Fort Lauderdale from the Class of 2002, Ellicott City from the Class of 1977 and with our Cleveland native shuttle driver, the Class of 2013. Though none of us had ever met before, in no time at all each was sharing stories and experiences. By the time we arrived at the airport everyone wished each other a safe journey home and expressed a hope that we’d meet again in five years.

Experiences like that are what keep me going back.