See, I live in Prince George’s County and this is why I don’t trust any of the school ratings on the real estate websites. I don’t know whether the “bad” schools actually are bad. We don’t have kids yet, so I’m kinda thinking I need to just volunteer at our local elementary school to see for myself. Worst case…

Maybe it’s just the case in poorer urban areas? I work in an old neighborhood inside the DC beltway, an inner-ring streetcar suburb that is working-class and pretty diverse (the mayor jokes that the only type of people we don’t have are rich people). I live in an old industrial town outside the beltway, also one of…

Oops, just going to correct myself here. I read the story from the local paper, and saw that the church itself is actually in Charles County. When the priest kicked them out, the funeral home workers were shocked, and took her casket back to their funeral home to do the service, which is just a few miles south down in…

Next county = Charles County, which has a much blacker population overall (due to all the middle-class black folks who have been gentrified out of DC over the last decade). Maybe the family was so upset they just wanted to get out of St. Mary’s County at that point.  

Yes, for some reason it’s common for convenience stores, drug stores, and gas stations to have employee-only bathrooms -because they don’t want to have to clean up after the public, I think? 

I got a ton for my wedding that were already stained. Since they were made of real cotton, not polyester, I was able to get most of the stains out by soaking with borax, and/or putting lemon juice on the stains and leaving them in the sun. Some still have small stains but it doesn’t really matter, the patterns are…

What a great idea!!  

What a great idea!!  

What a great idea!!  

I’ve never seen one at a thrift store here in the DC area, though I have found some great vintage napkins. But her advice to look at antique malls is excellent!

I saw this happen a lot at my rural high school, where the counselors knew nothing about financial aid. They basically told the kids in the advanced classes that their only options for affordable college were to do the honors program at our state school or to sign up for ROTC or go to one of the military academies. My…

I forgot Paul Rudd was in that!  I mostly remember loving the music, and my college roommate listening to the soundtrack over and over on Saturday nights as we got ready to go out.  

Ha! You just brought back a memory for me. I’m 12, riding my bike down my street. It was the end of a summer where I’d gone through a growth spurt and my curves had started to show up. Two neighborhood boys are hanging out in a yard, and one whistles as I approach. I’m shocked because the boys in the neighborhood…

Yeah. I appreciate the fact that they host movies, panels, poetry readings, and discussions about race and social issues, I have learned a lot from some of the books I’ve bought there, and I have made some really useful connections for my nonprofit at events they’ve held. When the chain builds new locations, they…

When I first glanced at this, I misread the title as “Genderqueen Teen” and I thought, that kid does look regal in that cape, standing strong and serious next to that woman. I never would have been brave enough at that age, and probably wouldn’t have the nerves now either. Go Torin!!!!

You’re right. I’m excited about Del. Alonzo Washington, a representative in the MD statehouse. He’s been pushing for years to make community college free, and things finally started happening this spring. We’ll see if the rest of Maryland is smart enough to follow Prince George’s County’s lead on this...

I knew the straw thing was taking off this year when our warehouse supervisor mentioned it at staff meeting. I work at a lumberyard-type place, and we serve free coffee to customers at the back of the warehouse because it’s so cold in there in the winter. We started using sticks of spaghetti instead of plastic…

My understanding is that the town pre-dates all the development that happened upstream. It never used to flood like this because it wasn’t dealing with the rainwater coming off of tons of asphalt and development further up the watershed.

Sorry, this link has more of the details:

I was pleasantly surprised recently about an incident that happened in Maryland, where a cop was a rude jerk and got turned in for it.