Monday, October 25, 2010

what's up the pike: midterms edition


- Wayne Phyillaier at Silver Spring Trails points us to some lovely images (PDF!) of the future Purple Line station in Bethesda. While it's still a little confusing how the Purple Line will fit into Silver Spring's new transit center, it's exciting to see what this thing could actually look like.

- Historian for Hire David Rotenstein writes about eruvim, symbolic spaces created in Orthodox Jewish communities which allow their members to leave their houses on the Sabbath. No fewer than four of these so-called "courtyards" exist in East County, and they're basically invisible to non-Orthodox people, bounded in some places by power lines, fences and the occasional piece of string. His examination of eruvim and an interview with the "inspector" who maintains the Silver Spring eruv is likely the most interesting thing you'll read all day.

- Apparently, Republicans in Damascus don't like living in Democratic Montgomery County. (Though as we explored last week, if they had real candidates, they could actually put a Republican in office again.) I do think it's funny that they're represented by one of only four openly gay members of the Maryland state legislature.

- Stop by the Forest Glen General Store tomorrow night to celebrate the creation of a "Quiet Zone" in the area, meaning that trains passing through no longer have to sound their horns. The party is from 6 to 9pm at 10 Post Office Road in Forest Glen.

Last, but not least:

- South Silver Spring gets a community garden!

- Rethink College Park presents a new student apartment building whose developers compare it to a "high-end hotel." Seriously? Do college students really need granite countertops and tanning beds? In four years of college, I only had one roommate who knew more than how to microwave chicken wings, so I wonder we even had kitchens to begin with.

1 comment:

Critically Urban said...

'Scuse me but for the 3,000 students at Penn who lived in the highrises when I was there, cooking and baking is an embedded practice. Some actual counter space would have been nice, and I wouldn't have complained if they were granite.