A Peace Celebration, a Mentor Solicitation and 'Ag'gregation

Happy Wednesday evening, Rockville!

Have you made it up Route 355 to the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair in Gaithersburg yet?

Did I mention they have and ?

Back in the day, (which, as my wife likes to say, was a Wednesday) my father coached high school soccer here in the county. About this time every year, as his teams wrapped up preseason conditioning workouts I remember them coming off the practice fields, sometimes at the same time as the football team.

The football players were often finishing the second half of “two-a-days,” those practices that are soon to be the stuff of football lure. (Most NFL players hated ‘em, so they’re gone. This guy says he’ll miss ‘em.) You could sometimes tell if the August heat had proven too much. The sweat-drenched players dragged themselves to the locker rooms. The coaches frequently cursed their efforts. I remember one particular coach who sent them on their way with: “Go home. Go to the fair. I don’t want to see you anymore.”

If you haven’t taken Coach’s advice yet, .

The fair runs through Saturday when it finishes with a bang—lots of bangs, and crashes, actually—with one of my fair favorites, the demolition derby.

Here’s the “” edition of “The Rundown”:

• The Rockville City Council on Monday proclaimed Aug. 29 to Sept. 3 “Mattie Stepanek Week” in Rockville. Jeni Stepanek, the mother of the late child poet, peace activist and Rockville resident who won international acclaim for his best-selling books, accepted the proclamation from the mayor and council at Monday’s meeting. The week will culminate with a peace celebration from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sept. 3 at .
• Sunday’s Washington Examiner reported on county residents lamenting the lack of handicapped-accessible parking at the new District Courthouse. Thanks to alert reader Aaron Kaufman for alerting us.
• will offer free child safety seat inspections from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Thursday. Click here for more details.
• With the school year quickly approaching (sorry kids), the City of Rockville is looking for volunteers for its mentoring program. The program matches adults and high school students with elementary school students looking to develop their social and academic skills. (I smell Student Service Learning credits.)
• The Gazette reports that an attorney with an pleaded guilty on July 28 to selling babies. You read that right. Read more here.
• Also in today’s Gazette, Alison Bryant writes that visitors to or will have to make a purchase at a Rockville Town Square business in order to get free parking validation under the new parking arrangement. The new lease agreement for the garages has generated a lot of discussion—and questions—since .
• From the “outside-the-Patch-but-Rockville-related” files: The Gazette’s Jeremy Arias reports on a reunion of alumni of the county’s segregated high schools, including George Washington Carver High School. The Carver building still stands on Hungerford Drive in Rockville, serving as .
• Today’s edition of “This Week in Aggregation” brings us Maryland Juice’s take on The Gazette’s report that county Republicans have a redistricting plan for picking up seats—or at least a seat—on the County Council and a Scientific American article that uses King Farm to look at new urbanism without transit. There’s a discussion of the Scientific American article over at Rockville Central on Facebook.
• We’re on Facebook too! (Over here! Over here! Look what we can do!) Check us out at Rockville Patch on Facebook. Follow us @RockvillePatch on Twitter.