Sen. Ron Young’s ‘My Story’ Shows How Frederick Became One of the Greatest Cities in America, Maryland Reporter, Walter Olson, January 3, 2023

Early in his second term, Young writes, he “agreed to meet with a group of Frederick residents on the newly developing west side of the city. Almost every one of them had moved to Frederick, mostly from Montgomery County. It became apparent, quickly, that they wanted no one to follow them. Many bought houses across the street from where the pipes for water and sewer were sticking above the ground. They had to know that it was going to be built on. Entire developments that had been through planning, site approval and were already partially developed.”

He tries to explain the problem: they want development stopped, period.

Finally, “I said, ‘I am going to call the City Attorney in the morning and ask him to draw up an ordinance that will not allow anyone else to move into Frederick.’ Amazingly, they broke out in applause. I then said, ‘I am going to ask them to make it five years retroactive and I want all of you to get out of my town.” Reaction was mixed, with some attendees laughing and others angry, but “I have to confess, it made me feel better and got better results than I was getting before” – the latter because a few of the critics decided to throw in the towel and work with him.

Frederick is a very cool city in Maryland, about an hour northwest of D.C. It’s a shining example of a city that brought itself back, and it’s growing now. I should really write more about it. There’s a lot here. Read the whole thing!

The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews, Longreads, Will McCarthy, January 3, 2023

Most of the time, reviews alternate between angry, comically banal, and downright bizarre. One star for Laurie’s Gentle Pet Grooming in Terrebonne, Oregon: “She butchered my pomeranian I would not recommend.” One star for a Walmart in Columbia, Kentucky: “I don’t go in Walmart stores, my husband went in. I hate Walmart.” Two stars for the New Hope Baptist Church in Five Points, Alabama: “Can’t really say …. car broke down and had to replace a radiator hose in the parking lot.” 

Internet reviews are one of those things that makes me feel like the internet has a certain consciousness. The whole overall phenomenon is really interesting. This is a great read delving into some of that weirdness and the bits of humanity behind it.

It reminds me of something I wrote a couple of years ago: how the ratio of Google to Yelp reviews for a restaurant can tell you pretty well how rich the area you’re in is.

This snippet is fun too. Snippet, because this really is a long read.

Some reviews read like poetry: “The bell has rung but not late for school. Am i in the right class,” David Prescott wrote of a Taco Bell in New Jersey. Some lines read like odes to Hemingway’s famous six-word story: “Unknowingly purchased sick Nigerian dwarf goats,” Joseph Hardwick wrote of the Hilltop Acres Goat & Sheep Auction in Romance, Arkansas. Sometimes it feels like the reviews are reaching toward some great metaphor. In remote Bowman, North Dakota, Ron Kramer stared at a scarecrow cowboy riding a red, white, and blue USA missile. “The missile warhead fell off,” he wrote. 

Oh, and also this, similar to my thoughts on the past lives of ordinary buildings:

Google Reviews is constantly changing. There’s no effort to preserve it — content is sometimes deleted or edited without warning.  Google policies governing the reviews shift intermittently. And unlike an archive, none of the reviews have been disembedded from their original context, nor are they easily accessible or searchable. Just the opposite, the reviews are a jumble of unorganized experiences in product-guide form. 

If the idea of an archive is to treat the evidence of human existence as somehow sacred, Google Reviews does not. Instead, it’s a throng of memories that could disappear at any moment, like life itself. It’s ultimately this notion of impermanence that makes the experience of reading Google Reviews feel so lonely to me.

It’s time to reimagine the church parking lot, The Christian Century, G. Travis Norvell, March 10, 2022

This is a great article by a pastor who heads a church that thought it had a parking problem. He thinks not:

Contemplate a parking lot for a moment. It’s a flat, impervious surface with a single purpose: the temporary storage of automobiles. These spaces for cars are designed only for those who can drive, excluding children, a good number of seniors, and many people with disabilities.

And a church parking lot is more than this. I invite you to stand in a church parking lot or imagine doing so. Notice your distance from neighboring houses, local businesses, or passersby. You are standing on a horizontal wall, an asphalt expanse that separates your faith community from its neighbors and community.

I wrote about church parking lots once—including a movement of churches in California that want to redevelop their parking lots into higher uses but depending on zoning codes are not permitted to. The vision of the genuine neighborhood church, embedded in the immediate community, isn’t pie in the sky. It was reality, for churches and all sorts of businesses too, before cars and suburbia.

Wednesday Walk: Rediscovering Tradition, Willoughby Hills, Heath Racela, December 28, 2022

This piece from Heath Racela’s newsletter highlights one of my own pieces here, on woodworking. But I’m featuring it because of his very interesting discussion of Christmas tree farms:

I had grown up visiting a local tree farm in Ohio, but our visits were usually about a half an hour per year. We’d find a tree, tie it to our roof, and head home. I had no idea about the growing process, so I was wide-eyed when we were filming in Sterling to learn all about the different varieties of tree, how they grow from a seedling, and how they are shaped into the recognizable Christmas tree shape (which is not how the tree would grow in nature).

There’s more. It’s a fun look into an iconic (and not particularly profitable) enterprise.

Related Reading:

New and Old #27

New and Old #28

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