We conclude our tour of campaign signs from the 2010 Howard County elections by looking at some of my favorites. (For more signs see part 1 and part 2.) Frank Aquino for Board of Education (2010) I like this mainly for the obvious but nice “A+” design element. The slogan is too small to read, and the domain name could be ditched in favor of increasing the size of “Board of Education.” ...
Continue down memory lane with me as we look back at the campaign signs for Howard County local elections in 2010. (For more signs see part 1 and part 3, and note that I didn’t make a complete record of all signs.) Frank Mirabile for US Congress (2010) Based on the sign it appears that Frank Mirabile’s campaign website had (has?) a very long domain name; was frankmirabile.com taken? The stars are an interesting design element, but the middle and largest star looks somewhat chopped off. ...
Now that the local Howard County political campaigns are starting to heat up, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the last local elections in 2010. Don’t worry, this won’t be a boring statistical analysis or a deep philosophical rumination. Instead I thought it would be fun to comment on the candidates’ 2010 campaign signs—or at least the ones that I saw and managed to take pictures of. (I had meant to do this post in 2010 but never got around to it. For more on this topic see part 2 and part 3.) ...
Last Tuesday Tom Coale announced that he’s running for the open House of Delegates seat in the newly-created District 9B in (parts of) Ellicott City. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the fundraiser in which Tom announced his campaign. Equally unfortunately I won’t be able to vote for Tom; I live just north of the boundary line of District 9B, in “Bates-Miller” territory. However the least I can do is to publish a blog post commenting on Tom’s platform and campaign. ...
Congratulations to the Howard County Library System for being selected the 2013 library of the year by Gale and Library Journal magazine. Note that the cover story in the June 15 issue of Library Journal, as well as pretty much any other story about the library system these days, highlights the new Miller Branch and Historical Center in Ellicott City. That’s fine by me, since I live in Ellicott City less than a mile from the Miller Branch; it’s my main library and I visit it frequently. However let’s not forget that the former flagship library in Howard County, namely the Central Branch in Columbia, is not nearly so cover story worthy these days. A while ago I imagined how the Howard County Library System might work with the county government to re-imagine the Central Branch for the 21st century, building a new and larger facility next to Symphony Woods and adding a startup incubator and co-working space to the existing library functions. ...
They say America is suffering a crisis of ill-maintained infrastructure prone to occasional failure. Closer to home I’ve been having my own infrastructure problems, culminating last week in shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. I’ll be taking some time out from blogging to invest in healing, physical therapy, and (I hope) eventual recovery. I’m sorry I’ll miss the memorial service on June 4 for Dennis Lane, and probably also the reception for Tom Coale on the 18th. In the meantime best wishes to my readers and fellow HoCo bloggers; I hope to see you online or off-line as soon as I can. ...
I knew Dennis Lane only slightly: I occasionally commented on his blog, he commented on mine once or twice, and I met and talked to him several times at Howard County blogger meetups and other events. I can’t speak to his life as a private person and how he came to a violent end, and even if I could I wouldn’t: I don’t blog about my own private and family life, and won’t do so about others. However I did want to say a few words to mark his death. ...
One political faction obtains a solid majority and uses it to push through a far-reaching initiative, only to have their dominance threatened in a subsequent election marked by newly-energized opposition and relatively low turnout. The 2010 mid-term victories of the Republican party? No, it’s the “Pioneers strike back” victories in the just-concluded elections for the Columbia Association Board of Directors. Tom Coale has already done a good wrap-up, so I’ll confine myself to a couple of thoughts continuing the analogy above. First, what I’ll call the “anti-Arbor” faction faces a decision on strategy similar to that of the anti-Obamacare GOP post-2010: They apparently don’t have the votes to reverse the decision outright, so they face a choice between trying to shape the Inner Arbor plan more to their liking, making compromises where they can find them, or throwing sand in the gears of CA governance to try to delay things until they can re-take a board majority and kill the plan then. ...
I don’t usually comment on Maryland politics beyond Howard County, but this Washington Post story on Martin O’Malley’s approval rating reinforces an opinion I’ve held for a while: O’Malley seems to be frittering away his second term trying to make himself into a national figure, as opposed to actually doing the hard work of preparing Maryland for success in the 21st century. Maybe this is an unfair characterization; maybe (as with the college tuition and school funding issues mentioned in the article) he’s just had a problem “communicating his accomplishments.” ...
I think this is a record for me: Three posts in one day, and all about libraries to boot, to mark the occasion of the “Evening in the Stacks” fundraising event at the Miller Branch of the Howard County Library System. After finishing my last post I happened to be thinking of the role that libraries play in the life of their communities and how libraries are portrayed in TV and films: as just another setting for sitcom wisecracking and rom-com “meeting cute,” or perhaps as a place to go to discover mysterious dark secrets leading to overblown action sequences—what I’ll call the “Indiana Jones” or Da Vinci Code perspective. ...