Books in Bloom at the Merriweather Color Burst Park Sunday October 10th 11 am-5 pm

  "The Downtown Columbia Partnership and The Howard Hughes Corporation announced that award-winning journalist, Dr. Nikole Hannah-Jones, will headline the Books in Bloom festival on Oct. 10. She will be featured in a conversation with Shallal.  Hannah-Jones is the creator of the 1619 Project, a major journalistic initiative for the New York Times. Commemorating the 400^th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in the American colonies, the 1619 Project’s lead essay by Hannah-Jones was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. 

 
Other confirmed writers featured in the fifth annual Books in Bloom include acclaimed writer of detective fiction and former Columbia resident Laura Lippman, journalist and author Jake Tapper of CNN, and Ram Devineni, creator of augmented reality comic books and a 2019 Merriweather District Artist-in-Residence.  The festival runs from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and will include readings and conversations about timely and critical issues, as well as other activities. Books in Bloom is free and open to the public. Register here. "

Here is the schedule for the speakers:

Author	Book	Time	Stage
Amy Argetsinger	There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America	11:00 AM	6100 Merriweather
Jake Tapper	The Devil May Dance	12:00 PM	Main Stage
Maureen Corrigan	So We Read On	12:30 PM	6100 Merriweather
Ram Devineni and illustrator Ashley Woods	Jupiter Invincible	12:30 PM	Juniper
Laura Lippman	Dream Girl	1:15 PM	Main Stage
Stacey Vanek Smith	Machiavelli for Women	2:00 PM	6100 Merriweather
Aparna Verna	The Boy with Fire	2:00 PM	Juniper
Nikole Hannah-Jones	The 1619 Project	3:00 PM	Main Stage

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They live among us!

 Anti-vaxxers of America

P.S.

    What must the Canadians think of their neighbors?

Ellicott City named 10th best place to live in the US by Money Magazine

     

    Naming the best places to live seems like a popular thing to do by a few different magazines.   Money Magazine has listed Ellicott City in the latest issue as the 10th best place to live.  Columbia has been listed in past years.  I tend to see our County as a whole as one of the best places to live so I am not sure how we can be broken up into individual towns.  I know I am biased as a Columbia resident for almost 45 years but I feel that the quality of life we have in Howard County is because of the impact of the Jim Rouse vision for Columbia.  Without that vision, we would simply be an overgrown suburban community of tract homes between DC and Baltimore.   You only have to look at Rockville or Towson to see the sprawl that unplanned growth around a city looks like.  Neither of those towns will ever be on a "best place to live" list.

     My intent is not to be dismissive of Ellicott City but exactly what defines Ellicott City? Main Street? Route 40? Tracts of expensive new homes? The seat of Howard County Government? Doesn't Columbia and Ellicott kinda blur together?  Doesn't the Columbia Village of Dorsey Search have an Ellicott City address? Doesn't Centennial Lake seem to be one of Columbia's lakes even though it is technically in Ellicott City? Maybe our area should only be labeled a "best place to live" when it comes to counties and not just towns.  By that criteria, we would be number one. 

P.S.

    I will give Ellicott City credit for the development of Korean businesses along Route 40?  Thank the high schools of Ellicott City for that.

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Latest Howard County COVID Metrics

 

P.S,

States with the lowest positivity rate--All Democrat states 

STATE	PERCENTAGE OF POSITIVE TESTS
Massachusetts	2.05%
California	2.17%
Rhode Island	2.25%
Vermont	2.76%
New York	2.95%
District of Columbia	3.27%
Maryland	3.47%
Illinois	3.56%
Colorado	3.97%
Connecticut	3.98%
Maine	4.19%
New Mexico	4.87%

P.S. 1

      750,000 Americans were killed in the Civil War.  The US should match that number with COVID deaths by Halloween. Maybe it isn't "just the flu."

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COVID-19 kills more Americans than died in the 1918 pandemic

     America now has a new pandemic record.