The Annapolis of Today

My search for Annapolis took a huge leap forward last Saturday when I was part of the judging team which decides on the youth portion of the "Carrier of the Year" award for The Capital newspaper.

I'll tell you - I found something talking to these kids. They are bright. They are energetic. They are entrepreneurs. They care about the people in their communities.

I heard stories of kids who stopped their "work" of delivering papers long enough to help people carry their groceries in; who would read the news headlines to customers who could not see well; and of kids who managed school, sports, activities, priorities and ambitions in a quest to provide extra value in their customers' lives at the tender age of 11 or 12.

I sometimes interview people several times their age for positions we need to fill here at HometownAnnapolis.com and I'll tell you, it is hard to find adults with the kind of values I saw on display there.

I also heard stories of gutsy young people who faithfully deliver their cargo of "news of what is happening around them" (one youngster's target-center quote) even when they sometimes hear gunshots on neighboring streets or have to have their parents drive them after dark to keep them away from the drug dealers' turf.

These are community leaders, people.

Need I say I was thoroughly impressed? I am so glad we are still an afternoon newspaper, because it affords a chance to have more of these young heroes out on the streets and it gives us an opportunity to see their faces and shake their hands.

They are not just the Annapolis of tomorrow; they are the Annapolis of today.

My hat goes off to them and I intend to follow their lead.

Update on the airplane gas station

One writer asked for the address of the web site about this airplane gas station I wrote of in my last post.

I'll do better than just the web address. I have some pics. (Left) is one I took while home.

Here is the banner and the link to the web site:
http://www.powellairplane.org/

'Nuff on the airplane gas station.

Catching up

Just returned from a 9 day hiatus to my place of deepest roots - East Tennessee.

Though I did not post to this blog during that time, I actually did think about it a lot.

You see - I am searching for this idea of 'community' here - and it is pretty much akin to the idea of 'home.' I guess every genuine community is a home of sorts.

In my search for Annapolis, I am trying to grasp what it means to call this new place home. To many of you, it has been home for years, maybe all of your lives. To others, including some of you who have written me, your experience is nearer mine - a new place to live or work - an interesting place to hang the hat. But not really home yet.

What is it that winds deeper into our souls when a place begins to really become home? It is pretty mystical. I realized that on my trip.

Going back to that fertile valley between the Smoky Mountains and the Cumberlands does strange things to me. I always think I will be prepared for it, and I never am.

I try to analyze it - but I cannot reach into it. It is just there - deeper than a feeling - stronger than an emotion. A settledness, a sense of safety and belonging - a reconnection with a part of life that is like an arm or a leg - attached securely and sublimely. It causes one to transcend time.

That is what 'home' means.

I am waiting for Annapolis to start growing on me like that. I believe it can, and will.

Other places I have lived have had a similar effect - though less intense. I recently heard an opera singer on a CD and something transported me back to Vienna, where I lived 3 years of my life. It was weird - I could once again see the contours of the opera house and smell the musky shadows of Stefansdom. The clear music brought it all back - along with faces, smells, dialects, even skidmarks on the cobblestones. The mind is a strange thing.

As we look for what it means to call Annapolis - or Crofton or Kent Island or Gambrills - home, it is good to notice the little things that mark our days with color and sound and life.

We never know what might come flooding back when we see a calendar or listen to a song or hear the clank of rigging against an aluminum mast somewhere else in the world one day.

Most likely it will be memories of Annapolis people - voices, laughter, tears, dreams, disappointments, life.

And they may well be framed by inanimate things - buildings, streets, neighborhoods - or even some quaint icon of innocent days past or of a happy time of life.

On my trip back to Tennessee, I saw where a group is trying to save an old gas station that was made in the '40's to look like an airplane. It was actually pretty goofy.

But I remember driving by that place as a kid, and how we all got excited to see 'the airplane' as we cruised into Knoxville. I thought we were the only ones. Well now this group has a Web site up and it seems dozens - even hundreds - of people are chiming in with their own versions of how this goofy gas station marked a part of their wonder years.

I thought of this blog then. How it must be for many of you who are watching Annapolis change.

A lot of energy is going into placing more modern and progressive things into quaint spaces that make up the Annapolis of many people's memories.

Some of those spaces might even be presently occupied by something that seem's 'kinda goofy' but has a deeper link to shared experience than meets the eye.

Every town has such places.

Can we preserve all of them? Of course not.

Which ones get the websites and the petitions and which ones get the bulldozers? Hard to determine.

But the very process of wrestling with that challenge is part of what makes us a community; a group of people struggling to hold onto a part of our shared life.

And it helps us feel we have a home.

On my search for Annapolis...

One letter came in from Katte, who recommended I talk to her father, now retired.

"My father has been a long time resident of Annapolis with lots of stories I'm sure he would love to share ... he was involved in the rowing team for many years and was also the team captain..."

"He also was a sailor for many years ..."

Sounds great - I like sailing stories.

"...I'm sure he would love the company as well as the interview and maybe (help) your readers not to forget the people of the past in Annapolis."

That is key.

We need to remember, see, and sense the past.

So much of my life has been shaped by older people telling incredible stories in places I have lived.

I want my son to have those experiences as well.

Thanks Katte and I will be calling him.

Let's talk about HometownAnnapolis.com

Many discussions have taken place about the name HometownAnnapolis.com.

People ask: "Why is it such a different name than The Capital?"

We did this because we had big dreams for the future.

The future is arriving fast.

What's going on is we are developing a platform for all sorts of things which relate to Annapolis and Anne Arundel county. The site will eventually offer a lot of content and interactivity beyond what is in the newspaper itself.

We are very proud of our newspaper and what we print is the foundation of all our content. But we want to push far beyond what will fit on newsprint alone. Our goal is to be a strong print/online tandem team.

For the present, however, the site is still predominantly based on the daily news stories and features as they appear in the newspaper.

(The news story content is promoted very well on our news home page and indexed in our top stories page. The news home page is what you see if you come to the site using 'capitalonline.com').

What are these future interactive things?

Stay tuned and you will see several new launches after the first of the year. I cannot go into details yet, but suffice it to say HometownAnnapolis.com will become an even more exciting portal to online information for everyone in this county.

We are also dedicating the site to be a new communications 'place' for all the communities of Anne Arundel county.

This is your Web site.

It will be increasingly two-way. It will have a lot of user feedback and citizen journalism. Keep this in mind - we are looking for interested people, who want to have a say.

Other new things

In a more traditional vein (if you can talk about anything 'Internet' as having a tradition already) we have just launched some new web features that are creating a lot of buzz.

One is a new interactive calendar, which is now database-driven and allows you all sorts of searches and filters. Pick your venue, or your event type, or your geographic location.

In the near future you will be able to subscribe to feeds of updated calendar events to your iPods, personal web pages, cell phones or anything that will take RSS.

We have also launched a new and very comprehensive high school sports page.

Capital sports writer Aaron Gray has done a masterful job with video coach interviews (football), game updates and a new blog - The Aaron Gray Sports Blog.

Aaron's blog is a lot of fun - my family loves his YouTube links!

We also launched a new Navy sports section, featuring not only story links and score updates, but a new, popular blog by Capital sports writer Bill Wagner.

Earlier in the year we launched in-story commenting, and a tool for you to quickly see all the recent users' comments posted together on our 'Your Say' page.

User commenting on stories has taken off and has started many valuable, and often emotional, discussions about all sorts of issues and events.

We try to take a basic hands-off attitude towards the comments and let them run unless they violate stated rules. These are your comment boards.

What is this Community thing?

In the next post I want to write about a broader concept - community.

A large part of our goal with this Web site is to give you a place to speak, react, think and create online with us - and to help us all further define our sense of what our communities are.

What does it mean to live in Annapolis? or South County? or Crofton? or Pasadena? or Glen Burnie?

That is something we really want to explore and we are depending on your help.

Part of my blog is about my own experience and my family's experience as newcomers. But a lot of this blog is going to be about your sense of community - where you live.

Several have already written and I will post some and follow up on others.

Please write.

Annapolis Street Vignette

Foggy Morning in Annapolis - One of the best ways to get to know a place is from the street. The sounds. The smells. The people you meet by chance. Thursday morning (yesterday) dawned foggy so I grabbed a camera and headed downtown for some pictures and to see who I could find. Had some great experiences. Grabbing a parking meter space I discovered I needed to put in at least a quarter to grab the shot. Checked pocket. No change. A quick duck into 49 West Coffeehouse Winebar and Gallery to buy something, anything, to get some change. The pastry bill came to $1.86. I told the guy at the counter I needed to make change and come out with a quarter. "Here," he said, handing me a quarter. "Don't worry about it." Friendly math. I ran out to get some fog shots and then ducked back into the coffeehouse and met some people. It was great fun and the kind of laid-back morning experience that is common in Annapolis.

Ran back out and met some more folks. I set up some shots of the capitol dome in the mist and decided to photograph and try to interview the first person who walked in front of the camera. That person was Mark Haggerty of Annapolis. Delightful fellow, full of life. Back to the coffee house and grabbed a shot of Ryan (the guy at the counter) serving customers (that's Eileen of Middletown, DE, and Stephanie of Pasadena). Enjoyable atmosphere. (Table has Mark and Lecie Davis and Lance and Terri Goldberg, along with Mike Rainen, all of Kansas City). Then it was back to the office and back to work. One more vignette in my search for Annapolis.

Introduction

Well, here it is.

My long-promised blog.

I love to talk with people, about people, and discover what makes people tick.

I also love new places and Annapolis is a new place to me. It is a place, however, that I have had imaginations of since I was a boy with sailing ships and Navy stuff on my wall. And now I live here - time to find the real Annapolis.

Besides my personal goals, I also want to discover what this place, and the county in general, means to others who live here and have lived here for years. That is an incredibly fun thing to do. It is a lot of what we are about with our new community portals opening up on the HometownAnnapolis.com web sites.

You will be hearing more and I want you to be a part of it all.

Check back often to see what I come up with and what others have to say!

And feel free to write me your ideas. I will publish some of them here.