REFLECTIONS ON HOME IN COLUMBIA

I am so looking forward to March 4, from 9:30 to noon when the Women’s Studies program at Howard Community College will hold its annual salon in Monteabaro Hall.  This year it is entitled  “The Seasons of a Woman’s Life.” Faculty from the Arts and Humanities division, including Dean Valerie Lash, Dr. Helen Mitchell, and accomplished poet Tara Hart will use poetry, music and dance to illuminate the gifts of each season. There will be time for audience questions and conversation.

Near the end of the program they will present me with the “Woman of Vision Award.” This is quite a joy for me.

Come and join us if you like.  No reservations and no cost.

When we returned from three weeks in Southeast Asia, one of the first tasks Lloyd performed was to fill the big bird feeder on our back deck.  Although we had missed the blizzard of 2016, more than a foot of snow remained on the lawn surrounding out home.  Sitting by the window next to our kitchen table we watched finches, sparrows, cardinals, wrens, and woodpeckers come by to feed.  And of course, there were the ubiquitous squirrels.   We have been home for two weeks, and just a few days ago, from our upper deck we spotted the first mourning dove couple on a pine branch outside our bedroom window (the one so beautifully adorned with photos and words of Zach).  Today’s sighting?  The first pairs of Canada geese and Mallards flew in and landed on the ponds beside our home.

The buds on the maples outside the window above our headboard are beginning to take shape.  It seems that each morning they are just a bit easier to detect with the naked eye than the day before.

Aah, Spring is coming.

BREAKING NEWS

Moments before pushing the Send button, we had a loud knock on the front door and went out to see a fire on our next door neighbor's porch climbing up the wall. In the next few minutes, eight vehicles arrived including a hook and ladder and approximately 20 fire fighters, several of whom I knew from my days as County Executive. The fire was quickly put out with minimal property damage and no injuries.  Thank you to the Howard County Fire Department for your speedy and effective response!

Note: Be sure to check your smoke detectors!

REFLECTIONS ON ZACH

I went with Lloyd a couple of weeks ago for a routine checkup with his cardiologist.  In the waiting room we saw a friend who was there for a post-op check-up.  We had been unaware of her surgery and asked how she was doing.  She responded that in the recovery room she had her husband take a photo of her “Zaching.”  She then sent it out to family and friends to assure them that she was was OK, just as Zach had.  Barely a week goes by that we don’t hear another instance of his continuing inspiration.

Last weekend The Zaching Against Cancer Foundation, which Zach himself was instrumental in forming at meetings around his family’s dining table, held its second annual Gala at the M&T Stadium in Baltimore.  More than 400 friends of Zach and his family enjoyed good food, great dancing, and an opportunity to share their memories and stories about Zach.  Lloyd and I loved being there, and what we loved most was the opportunity to talk with some of Zach’s friends.  We came to know them mainly when they visited Zach either at home or at Johns Hopkins when he was devoting his life to spreading joy and helping others while working to survive brain cancer.  They are now graduating from college. Their memories of Zach are as vivid as if he were with them with his great laugh, which they frequently mention.  The main speaker at the gala was a teenage boy, Joshua Depuis, whom Zach had met, befriended, and counseled when they both had brain cancer.  Zach and his mom drove to Virginia on the eve of Joshua’s surgery for a pizza party he had requested in a local restaurant.  Not having known he was coming, Joshua said it was one of the greatest moments of his life when he saw Zach walk in.  Now cancer free for two years, he told us all that Zach was his greatest inspiration not only when he was striving to recover, but continuing through today and he is certain will last for the rest of his life.

Cambodia was one of the countries Lloyd and I visited during our trip to Southeast Asia.  We observed a deserted prison and met one of the very few survivors of the Khmer Rouge massacre.  He spoke with our group of fourteen for an hour.  He also showed us the concrete cell where he had been imprisoned and tortured.  The entire populace of the capital, Phnom Penh, was evacuated and many thousands were tortured in this prison and murdered in the adjacent Killing Fields.  In these fields there is a simple memorial in the form of a fence surrounding a great tree near which children were killed.  The fence pickets are sticks with bark still on, about three feet long and an inch in diameter.  Each has been whittled with one pointed end sunk in the earth and the other pointing to the sky.  Over the years, many Cambodians and international visitors at this sacred grave for children have placed  bracelets, mostly homemade, totaling in the thousands on each of the fence pickets.  Now there is another that reads “ZML #Believe”.  Zach’s full name is Zachary Monnett Lederer.  My mom’s maiden name is “Monnett”.  We debated whether to place this precious bracelet at such a horrid site.  We agreed that since all of their beautiful souls are now mingled it was not only fitting, but that Zach would place it there himself if he were bodily with us.  The bracelet was his creation and his parents ordered many and spread them around.  Another version, also a Zach creation reads “Living the Dream” the description Zach gave to his own life. Now I am constantly aware that something is missing on Lloyd’s right wrist where he has constantly worn that bracelet for almost three years.  Soon he will wear a new one.

For me, and I believe for many others, the strength of Zach’s inspiration continues to grow.  As I write now, on the table by my laptop is a card with words of an early Christian monk sent by Father Richard, a Catholic priest who was a close friend of my Mom’s when she was in her 80’s. He returned to Maryland not only for her funeral but also to stand with Zach and his family, including Lloyd and me, to pray with him in his last weeks on this earth:  “When we die, we lose neither our awareness nor our understanding. Rather our awareness becomes as wide as the sky and our understanding as deep at the sea.”

March 11 will mark two years since Zach took his last breath on this earth.

REFLECTIONS ON BALTIMORE, MY HOMETOWN

What an honor to have the director of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Library, Carla Hayden, named head of the U.S. Library Congress.  As a high school student on North Charles Street, I used to do my research in that library.  I have had several meetings with Carla in her office in the central library on Cathedral Street across from the Basilica.  What a principled, intelligent, and compassionate woman.

Congratulations Carla.

Library of Congress: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bsedlibrary-20160225-story.html

Another positive distinction for my hometown- Grammy Nominees from Baltimore:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/midnight-sun-blog/bs-ae-grammys-local-20160212-story.html

Richer City, poorer schools: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-school-funds-20160208-story.html

 We still have a long way to go regarding public safety and justice http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-deray-mckesson-20160223-story.html

REFLECTIONS ON PUBLIC POLICY IN OUR COUNTY, STATE, AND NATION

Subsides to developers: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-md-ci-council-tif-20160201-story.html

The TIF’s (Tax Increment Financing) described in the article above are deepening the economic injustice in Baltimore.

Although TIF’s were designed first for use in California as a step toward greater economic justice, in fact they turned out to be the opposite.  Governor Jerry Brown finally eradicated their use.  Then in one of my last years in the legislature, Maryland adopted their use.  I worked hard to defeat the bill, but my efforts proved futile against strong lobbying by moneyed interests.

If you follow local news, you will see that now Howard County is preparing to allow the use of TIF’s in the further development of Downtown Columbia, even though they have historically been designated for use in “economically distressed areas.”

Couple this with the fact that there is not yet a commitment to build moderate, much less lower, income housing in downtown, and we see a deepening of economic injustice in our own county.

If this occurs, it will fly in the face of Jim Rouse’s dedication to building a new town “where the CEO and the janitor can live in the same community.”

Every one of us has a responsibility to speak out on this.

REFLECTIONS ON OUR PLANET BEYOND THE U.S

Russia

Last week Lloyd and I drove to Baltimore to attend a closed circuit interview with Edward Snowden at an undisclosed location in Russia.  Shriver Hall was filled to the brim and hundreds of people, mostly students. Hundredswere left outside unable to get in. Lines began forming in the bitter cold on campus an hour before the scheduled time.

The questions were posed mostly by academics and some by students.  Snowden was pensive though relaxed in replying clearly and substantively.  A few days later, the Washington Post reported that he said he would return home to the U.S. if he were to be guaranteed a fair trial.  I’m not clear how we could give such a guarantee.

Italy

A multi-denominational group of religious leaders – Jewish, Catholic, Muslin, and Methodist - from the Baltimore area will visit with Pope Francis and pray together for the people of this city besieged by tragedy. 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-pope-francis-baltimore-faith-leaders-20160225-story.html

Mexico

“Monarch butterflies have made a big comeback in their wintering grounds in Mexico.”  The Director of the World Wildlife Fund said “Now more than ever, Mexico, the United States, and Canada should increase their conservation efforts to protect and restore the habitat of this butterfly along its migratory route.”

Lloyd and I and our neighbors in the 60 townhouse community of Scarborough in West Columbia are doing our part by carefully tending to the milkweed which springs up around the two ponds on our property – one outside our dining room window and one behind our home.  Milkweed is the plant on which Monarch feed and lay their eggs and thus key to successful migration

Fifteen years ago on a trip to Mexico we visited the central highlands town which serves as the hub of the Monarchs wintering place.  We walked up a small pine covered mountain on which each of the huge evergreens’ boughs were drooping with literally thousands of butterflies each.  At one point Lloyd had at least one hundred of them alit on his jacket and jeans.  The pattern of their annual migration to Canada, involving one or two generational cycles, is nothing short of miraculous.

REFLECTIONS ON OUR UNIVERSE

http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-sn-einstein-ripples-breakthrough-20160211-story.html

Last month I referenced Alan Lightman, a physicist teaching at MIT and a novelist who authored “Einstein’s Dreams

Just two weeks ago “scientists announced that they had detected gravitational waves created by the violent collision of two black holes more than one billion light years from earth, a resounding confirmation of Albert Einstein’s postulation a century ago about the ripples in the fabric of space and time.”  This discovery “will open a new window into the universe…and will be like going from silent movies to talkies.”

Understanding any scientific theories, much less Einstein’s, has never been one of my strong points, and it appears increasingly clear that it will not be during my time on this earth.  I believe I do have a good eye and ear for poetry, and the following words of Einstein are nothing if not humble and poetic: “I want to know God’s thoughts…the rest are details.”

BEATLES QUOTE

“May we all live a life filled with constant awareness of 'unfathomable hugeness'"

~Liz