An important voice in the dark

I got my first giggle of the day today when I read the Facebook status update from my friend Julia Jackson McCready: “For those of you who are following along at home, I stared at the page for about an hour and a half this morning, thinking I had nothing to say. I guess I did.”

My first thought was that of Seinfeld, the television comedy widely described as the show about nothing. I responded to Julia that many people have written extensively about nothing, implying that she too could fill a page on nothing if she needed to.

But it was my mistake in reading her comment as an obtuse double negative; as Julia stared and stared at that empty page, she did indeed come up with a topic for today’s edition of her blog, Village Green/Town Squared: “I don’t buy it.”  

As I have shared more than once in this space, Julia is my blogging hero. She is a disciplined and well-read writer who uses her gift of the written word to praise, promote, criticize, inform, educate and challenge her community on many different topics and issues.

She is a wife and mother; an educator of the smallest of the littles (which in itself is worthy of gold-medal status, in my opinion); an active member of her community and her church; an activist who is often advocating for the LGBTQ community, Muslims, people of color and any other “other” group that might need a little extra support and understanding. 

Pretty much every day of the week, every week of the year, Julia yanks herself out of the warm (or cool, depending on the time of year) comfort of her bed at what I figure has to be 4 a.m. or so to hit the keyboard so the rest of us can enjoy her daily dose of information. 

When she hits the road at 7-ish (at least in pre-Covid school days), she already has several hours of braining under her belt.

Perhaps Julia knows there are many of us who look forward to her posts, so much so that, on the rare occasions she can’t come up with anything or — gasp — oversleeps, she tattles on herself and lets us know there will be no blog post that day.

I have said time and time again that I want to be like Julia when I grow up. It’s time for me to admit that just isn’t going to happen. I created this blog five and a half years ago and in that time have published the same number of posts Julia produces in two months.

My first blog post, ironically enough, referenced the nothingness of Seinfeld.

I first met Julia in 2011 when I was the editor of Columbia Patch and she was a fledgling blogger who was kind enough to post her musings on the Patch site. My interactions with her at the time were to mainly “approve” the publication of her posts (and never as quickly as I should have) as I was trying to learn the ropes of a new, demanding, never-ending job and a new community while trying to stave off supervisors hell-bent on quantity and “clickability” of content.

Because there was so much going on, I failed to realize what a gift Julia is to her community. She is whip smart, well-educated and well-read, a thinker and questioner, an empathetic and passionate lover of and believer in the Rouse ideals of her planned community, a mother bear to her family, friends and other loved ones, the aforementioned educator (at a school and her church) and an advocate, also as mentioned, for any oppressed or downtrodden individuals or groups.

She, like many writers, is a sensitive introvert. But she sets that aside and puts on her badge of courage when it comes time to speak out on something that she knows will bring criticism at best and mean bullying at worst. Julia steels herself as best as she can against the criticism, but sometimes it’s hard to do, especially when she puts her identity out there and some of the worst criticism comes from folks with fake names hiding behind a computer or phone screen.

For the sake of her community, and her desire to inform and expose, Julia perseveres. She will get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow and the next day and the next day to share her thoughts with her community. Whether she’s encouraging people to vote in a village center council or presidential election, bringing attention to a littered nature trail or thanking an elected official for a promise kept, Julia provides a much-needed voice for her community.

While Julia is not a journalist providing hard-core local news and is the first one to remind her readers of that, her voice and the voices of others like her are becoming more and more vital to our communities as local news outlets either die or surrender to their death beds for prolonged hospice care.

Thank you, Julia. And write on!

Et tu, McCormick?

Oh, McCormick! Why must you play such games?

I, of course, am talking about the “limited edition” Old Bay Hot Sauce 2.0 release.

In January of this year, a mere six months ago but a lifetime of lifestyle changes ago, the Hunt Valley-headquartered, world-renowned spice company hyped and then released a limited amount of hot sauce flavored with its famous and extremely popular Old Bay Seasoning.

The newborn Old Bay Hot Sauce (left) with its big sister, Old Bay Seasoning.
Photo by Marge Neal

We in the Delmarva region would probably die if the company ever chose to discontinue the life-sustaining substance. We have a container in the spice cabinet, a container on the boat, one with the camping gear, a back-up in the pantry and a back-up to the back-up. Some folks stocked up when the company announced it was going to switch from the iconic metal tins to plastic containers. It gets shipped to friends across the country when they can't find it in their local stores. It's in shakers in Maryland restaurants, right along side the ubiquitous salt and pepper. We don't get asked if we want fries with that; we get asked if we want Old Bay with that. And we ask for it if it isn't offered.

So the powers that be at McCormick had to have known in January that the “limited edition” hot sauce would be hoovered up faster and more efficiently than Brooks Robinson ever handled the hot corner at Memorial Stadium.

And sure enough, indeed it was. The bottles with the instantly recognizable red and yellow labels flew off store shelves into the welcoming arms of hoarders who then immediately advertised the stuff for $50 a bottle and up on eBay and other digital marketplaces.

And this was BEFORE Covid-19 shut down the world and made finding toilet paper, paper towels, flour, yeast and freezers, for God’s sake, a competitive sport.

You can’t tell me that isn’t exactly what McCormick officials hoped for. You can’t pay for that kind of publicity — even for a tried-and-true product that needs no introduction.

If this was some crazy, off-the-wall product created by a little mom-and-pop shop with little capital to work with, I could see this kind of treatment.

But this was a deep-pocketed, well-established business toying with its flagship product. They know it’s going to sell and they can afford to have product sit on shelves in every grocery store in the land.

But they had to play us.

I completely missed the first wave but was invited to join an email list so I could be “among the first” to know about a second release! Right! I’m sure I got that email a couple of days before millions of others got it.

I can always find basil without packing a knapsack for a day-long hunt. Ditto turmeric, paprika and even cream of tartar.

So why do we need to don safari gear and hire a Sherpa to find this hot sauce?

Make enough of the damn stuff to supply the demand, insist it have a fairly uniform retail price (instead of $3.49 at Weis and $5.99 at Giant) and keep it on the shelves.

I think the second release lasted for about 10 days before it was pretty much gone. I saw an article on myrecipes.com that stated more was due to hit shelves July 6. We’ll see. But I got enough to last for a while and to send a couple bottles out of state.

But there’s just no reason for McCormick to be doing this. Especially now. 

Right now, our lives have enough uncontrollable life-and-death stress without a beloved, trusted, popular company playing head games with us. We expect more. We don’t expect another kick in the teeth when we’re already in the dentist’s chair getting the last damage repaired.

Anyhoo, gotta go ... gonna sew bottles of hot sauce in my trench coat liner and hit the road.

Stay safe. And enjoy that hot sauce.

Some steamed shrimp (center), accompanied by White Marsh Brewing Company's seasonal  blueberry ale (served in a Union Brewery Divine glass, left) and the Old Bay sisters.
Photo by Marge Neal

Meet the artist known as Liam

I’ve not been hanging out on the Interwebs much recently. There’s a lot going on in my life and I just don’t have the time or the energy to deal with the idiocy, the well-shared but false information and the general human bashing that seems to occur 24-7 these days.

You don’t need me to tell you life has been very different in this country since at least mid-March. The novel coronavirus needlessly caught the country off guard and we find ourselves in unprecedented times — at least during most of our lifetimes. Quarantined because of a raging global pandemic, plunged into unemployment at near-record numbers and an economic recession teetering on depression, and faced with third-world-country-like shortages of basics at grocery stores have made for short tempers, crying sessions and sleepless nights.

That said, I do some occasional lurking in case I miss something true and useful. And so it is that I did indeed recently witness the collective Internet community using its power for good and I’m here to tell that story.

Liam Ryan is a typical 9-year-old boy living in Baltimore County. He is one of the tens of thousands of students whose school year was abruptly interrupted by the pandemic. School children by their very nature are social creatures, with school friends, neighborhood pals, immediate and extended family members, teammates and the like. They go, go, go and it had to be difficult for that speedy lifestyle to have the brakes applied so suddenly and swiftly. 

Liam finished his school year like most of the rest of the nation’s schoolchildren … at home, in front of a screen. He told me he tried to get most of his schoolwork and assignments for each week done by Tuesday so he had much of the rest of the week — aside from required face/screen time — to devote to his hobbies and more fun stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, Liam’s mother, Brenda, posted a picture of an unfinished painting of Winnie the Pooh on her Facebook page. In the post, she said that Liam didn’t often share his artwork; that in typical artist insecurity, he was afraid people wouldn’t like it or worse, make fun of it.

But here’s the deal. Even in its unfinished stage, the painting was good! It showed a good eye with placement on the canvas to give the subject a look of motion and engagement, and good perspective.

Shortly after Brenda posted the picture, the gushing compliments started pouring in from her many friends and colleagues. People were genuinely impressed with the young artist’s talents, and comments ranged from “good job” to “please keep it up,” peppered with the occasional hint that the poster (including this one) wouldn’t mind being given an original Liam Ryan!

A little while later, after considerable comments had piled up, Brenda shared them with her son, who was both amazed and pleased with the praise.

After getting Brenda’s permission to write about Liam, I chatted with him on the phone for a few minutes. He was shy at first but quickly warmed up as the passion he has for art and writing began to shine.

I asked him what all the comments from people he doesn’t know meant to him. Because let’s face it — your mother has to tell you your artwork is good but strangers certainly don’t have that obligation. The fact that so many folks spoke up and gushed about the painting meant something, right?

“It boosted my confidence, that’s for sure,” Liam said. “And I think I’m a little braver in letting people see my work now.”

Wow! Good job, social media!

He was a little surprised that she posted the picture on Facebook.

“I was grabbing a snack and I noticed she took a picture of my painting,” he said. “And then she told me she was going to post it on Facebook. And I was like, ‘Wait, what?’”

The young artist also has quite the sense of humor. Asked when he first got interested in drawing and painting, he said he was about 2 when he first noticed some crayons and paper on a table and got to work.

“And that natural talent just came oozing out?” I asked.

“No,” he said honestly. “That was just scribbles.”

After I laughed at that comment, he said, “I’ve also done stand-up comedy. I’m pretty funny.”

I mentioned that he might have gotten his sense of humor from his mother, who can be quite hysterical.

“She can be pretty funny,” he admitted.

He created the portrait of the famous bear with acrylic paints on canvas. The supplies were a Christmas gift to him from a brother. And he gifted the finished painting to a sister to hang in her bedroom. The circle of art life.

He said he Googled Winnie the Pooh and found an outline drawing of the bear. He used that outline as a model for his painting, and then finished it by adding a tree, complete with a honey-dripping bee hive hanging from it, in the background.

Liam Ryan poses with his completed painting of Winnie the Pooh. Photo by Brenda Ryan

Liam prefers to work in pen, marker and pencil except for the occasional special project.

“And I used to write stories but mainly stopped to do my art,” Liam said. “But I did mainly pictures that tell the story.”

Asked if he preferred the graphic novel style of storytelling, he said yes, but with a caveat.

“That, and my handwriting is pretty horrible.”

The pandemic brought Liam’s fourth-grade year at Edgemere Elementary School to an abrupt halt but he already has plans to attend Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts, where he hopes to get accepted in a visual arts magnet program.

“I didn’t know about that until my grandmother told me,” he said of the regional magnet school. “It would be great to be able to go there.”

In honor of Independence Day, Liam created a drawing of Micky Mouse doing the Pledge of Allegiance, though he admits that wasn’t the original goal.

“I tried doing Micky with a peace sign but I couldn’t get it to work so I ended up with his hand on his heart and decided to add the flag.” he said.

Inspiration is inspiration.

Liam is part of a large, blended, Brady Bunch-like clan with eight children, mom, and dad Richard.

The parents are raising their children in a manner that supports and encourages them while also teaching them about realities and limitations.

“We are very firm parents,” Brenda said. “We tell all of our kids, we expect you to be the best human beings you can be. I don’t care what kind of job you have, what kind of house you have — be a decent human being who can make a difference to others.”

Brenda is convinced that Liam’s art has been a therapy of sorts for him. The family has been hit hard by numerous deaths over the past several years, including Brenda’s father and father-in-law, her brother and two of the blended family's grandmothers. Losing two grandfathers, two grandmothers and an uncle in a short period of time was devastating for Liam, Brenda said.

“My brother’s death affected him horribly,” Brenda said. “He really struggled; sad all the time, not focused, struggling in school.”

She started encouraging him to dig into his artwork and short stories as a way of getting the sadness and the raw emotions out, and firmly believes it helped.

“It really was therapy for him — it helped him move on,” she said. "He's very empathetic and very sensitive and tends to hold his emotions in — this really allows him to get those emotions out."

After losing several family members over a short period of time, Liam created this painting titled "My Life is a Mess." Photo by Brenda Ryan

Brenda said Liam was about 5 when the parents noticed he had an above-average ability in art.

“We realized he was above par and needed to encourage him,” she said. “He’s not a prodigy but he’s definitely above par and we want to continue to feed that for him as long as he’s interested.”

Liam admits to knowing he’s “more artsy than sportsy.”

“I tried soccer but didn’t really like it,” he said. “I like camping and the outdoors, but I don’t like bugs.” 

Indeed. I’m with you on that one, bud.

So, to the social media community, thank you for a spontaneous burst of praise and appreciation for a shy but talented young boy who’s had his life turned upside down more than once.

Thank you for being genuine and providing positive words that really had an impact.

And if you’re lucky enough to end up with a Liam original for your refrigerator, hang on to it.

Because you just never know!

"When Sadness and Anger Collide" by Liam Ryan.
Photo by Brenda Ryan

"A Happy Place" by Liam Ryan.
Photo by Brenda Ryan

Hunting the elusive candy cane

Having spent more than half of my working life in the field of recreation and parks, I thought I had heard of, participated in or personally organized every special event known to mankind.

But my hat is off to the folks of the Bengies-Chase Recreation Council, who made me sit up and smile upon finding news of an upcoming special event being held the weekend after Thanksgiving.

The rec council will hold its Candy Cane Hunt on Saturday, Nov. 30, at Eastern Regional Park, 11723 Eastern Ave. in Chase. Registration will be held beginning at 8:30 a.m. and hunts for children in a variety of age groups (2 and under; 3-4; 5-6;7-8; and 9-11) will begin promptly at 9 a.m. Hunts will be staggered from 9 a.m. to noon, depending on age group, according to a notice from the council.

Other holiday-related activities will be held throughout the morning and participants are encouraged to bring donations for the council’s hat and mitten tree.

I have many fond memories of working with Bengies-Chase, both as a part-time rec leader in the late 1970s and early 1980s and as the rec community supervisor in the 1990s. Special events, including the council’s annual Easter egg hunt, the haunted house that once transformed the Bengies Community Building, and bon fires at Miami Beach (affectionately referred to by staff as Miami Beach North), all bring back memories of fun, camaraderie and the occasional debacle.

At some point, in the later 1970s, the council still used real eggs for the Easter egg hunt. The Golden Age clubs that met at the community building traditionally helped hard boil and dye the eggs used for the event. Early on the morning of the hunt, I was one of many people who helped spread the eggs across the campus of Seneca Elementary School. After someone accidentally dropped an egg while attempting to hide it, we were horrified to learn the egg was raw. It turned out many of the eggs were raw — the result of one person putting a pot of eggs on the stove and anther person promptly taking it off to place another pot on the heat.

I think the use of plastic eggs filled with treats began the following year!

In any case, the idea of a candy cane hunt is new to me and I think it’s wonderful the staff and volunteers of Bengies-Chase are burning the creative oil to come up with new and different activities for the community. 

The event is free to all. For more information, call the rec council office, 410-887-5349.

And don’t forget your donations for the hat and mitten tree.

Remembering the unthinkable

As hard as it is to believe, today is the one-year anniversary of the shootings at the Capital-Gazette newspaper offices in Annapolis.

One year ago today, five heroes of the people, five saviors of truth, five shiners of light on darkness, lost their lives.

Journalists Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara and Wendi Winters and sales assistant Rebecca Smith died June 28, 2018, when a gunman with a reported long-standing grudge against the paper entered the building and started shooting.

We as a society have become somewhat hardened to the news of another mass shooting on American soil because they have sadly become all too common. But when news of this shooting hit the local airwaves, I distinctly remember my heart skipping a beat. The blood drained from my face and all I could do was suck in my breath and wait for more details.

I instantly thought of Rob, whose work I had admired from afar for years, and Gerald and John, both of whom I had met over my years as a journalist.

I sat in front of a television for hours, waiting for more details to be released and for the dead to be identified. As the list of names was read, I started crying and couldn’t stop. It was almost inevitable, given the small size of the staff, that I would know some, if not all, of the victims.

As I sat and tried to come to grips with this shooting in my professional community, I began to feel somewhat guilty over becoming hardened to the news of such acts. Listening to news readers list the names of people I knew made me realize that, whether a shooting was in Georgia, or Kentucky, or Massachusetts, or (insert state/town here), the readings of those victims elicited the same response from people in those communities. We forget that these dead people are more than just a list of names; they are spouses, parents, offspring, siblings, aunts, uncles, neighbors, colleagues and friends.

Every time there is a mass shooting, members of that community are sitting in front of a television, sobbing hysterically over the mention of names of people they knew. We lose sight of that and I have been much more in tune to that personal loss since the Capital Gazette shootings.

I don’t want to get too political here, because I don’t want to disrespect the memories of my fallen colleagues, but it needs to be said that the Annapolis massacre occurred just a couple of days after both our president and right-wing conspiracy theorist Milos Yiannopolis referred once again to journalists as the “enemy of the people.”

I would be foolish to say there is a direct connection between that rhetoric and the shootings, because there simply is not proof. But the shooter’s beef with the paper was many years old, and his allegations of defamation against the paper had been dismissed in court on many years ago as well. So why the timing now to shoot these people? Why not five years ago? The timing is suspect, in any case.

Journalists are not the enemy of the people. They are the people; they often live in the communities they write about. Their children attend the local schools, they worship in the churches, they shop in the stores, they dine in the restaurants, they’re patients of local doctors and dentists. They throw cookouts with their neighbors, they plan vacations together, they support youth rec leagues and community theater. They are not the enemy.

But I don’t want to dwell on that, as I said. I want to pay respect to the memories of five every day people who got up on the morning of June 28, 2018, went to work and didn’t return home to their loved ones.

Much has been written over the past year about the loss of the Capital Gazette staffers. They have been honored with a special Pulitzer award and have been memorialized at the Newseum. Fallen journalists, dubbed "The Guardians,” were named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Their stories have been told, their survivors have shared more intimate memories and their work has been acknowledged and honored.

It’s interesting that the one person I didn’t know at all — sales assistant Rebecca Smith — is the person I got to know the best in the aftermath of the shootings. Rebecca was a member of the Greater Dundalk community and I was honored to write the article for the East County Times that shared both the news details of the shootings and details of Rebecca’s life that helped paint a personal picture of who she was as a significant other, colleague, neighbor and friend.

I made sure to include her in anything I wrote or said about the victims of the attack. Many news accounts tended to discount Rebecca because she wasn’t a journalist. When the Newseum added the names of Fischman, Hiaasen, McNamare and Winters to the Fallen Journalists wall earlier this month, many news accounts didn’t even mention that a fifth, non-journalist also died in the attack.

I saw one news account that mentioned the names of the four dead journalists and added that a “sales assistant also died,” without mentioning Rebecca’s name.

I’m sure her journalist colleagues would have been quite upset with that treatment.

A newspaper staff is much like any other professional team in that each person’s job is important to the overall mission; a weak spot anywhere affects the quality everywhere. While journalists tend to get the public attention and are the ones with their names on their work, the advertising folks are the ones who bring in the money that gives us the space to print our work.

I once worked in a newsroom where the owner of the paper reminded us all the time that reporters cost him money and advertising folks made him money. The ad staff often had catered lunch or treats brought in to meetings, or held receptions that involved food. It was a standing joke that right before the leftovers needed to go in the trash, they would miraculously appear on the kitchenette counter in the newsroom for the writing staff to share.

No matter how close the food was to a mouldering mess, it was quickly consumed because, well, because no journalist ever turned down free food.

In all of the accounts I have seen of this incident, as written by Capital Gazette survivors and others, it strikes me that this group was a particularly tight-knit team who got along, socialized together after work and genuinely liked each other.

The loss of all five individuals matters and my heart still breaks a year later for that loss of talent, passion, skills and leadership, and for the loss of community champions that left Annapolis without some important voices and cheerleaders.

We lose sight of how important a community paper is and how much we depend on those often underpaid, overworked writers who share the stories larger news outlets often overlook. We only notice how much we depended on those voices after they are silenced.

Most often, the voices are silenced by the closure of a newspaper. To have those voices silenced by workplace violence is relatively new to us here in the U.S. The news of journalists targeted and killed because of their work happens in other, “less civilized” nations, we think, but could never happen here.

It is shocking then, when it does happen here, and is something we should never forget.

So here’s to remembering Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters, and here’s to appreciating those points of light in all of our communities.

Press on, Annapolis!

Blogger's confession:

Because of my emotional connection to this incident, I find myself, even at one year later, unable to write as clearly or as eloquently as I would like in my effort to honor these fallen colleagues. For some much better-written coverage, including columns written by Capital staffers and Maria Hiaasen, Rob’s widow, please visit https://www.capitalgazette.com.

Be sure to also visit Paul Gillespie’s beautiful, sensitive and poignant collection of portraits. You won’t be sorry.

O, those hapless O's!

Oh, those hapless Baltimore Orioles!

We knew the team was going to suck this year. At least  I did. And I’m too old to buy in to the “rebuilding” bull being marketed once again. I’ve been through too many “rebuilding” years to believe it will ever really happen. I just smile when I hear the young or naive fans talk about "rebuilding." 

While I didn’t expect the team to finish above last place, I did expect them to lose fewer games this year than last … which, as you may recall, was a near-record 115 games in the L column. But it sure looks like they are on pace to beat that number.

So I’m back to cheering like I was toward the end of last year … embracing the philosophy of if you’re going to do something, be the best ever. Set records. Have folks talking about you (remember, any attention is good attention).

The Orioles are so bad, they are garnering national media attention for all the wrong reasons.

Take, for example, this headline from a recent Onion article: “Norfolk Tides Third Baseman Sent Down To Baltimore Orioles.”

Photo Credit: The Onion

The story begins with this: “Hoping to give the still-developing prospect more time to find his game, the Norfolk Tides announced Wednesday that third-baseman Anderson Feliz would be sent down to the Baltimore Orioles.”

Anderson, according to the satirical piece, is dealing with injuries and is in a bit of a slump, so management decided to send him to Baltimore to “build up his confidence.” The plan is to have Anderson continue to work on the fundamentals needed to play consistently in Triple A competition.

It’s cute and a fun little read. How nice of the Orioles to provide such fodder for comedy writers.

Writer Ted Berg had some fun at the expense of the Birds and their fans when he wrote a USA Today sports column titled “At least you’re not a Baltimore Orioles fan.”

Unless, of course, you are. Berg writes: “But no matter how bad it gets this year — and for roughly half of MLB teams, it’s already pretty bad — you can take solace in this: Al least you’re not a fan of the 2019 Baltimore Orioles.”

He then highlights some possible record-breaking performances the team might achieve: They remain on pace to shatter the all-time mark for home runs allowed in a season; they currently have the worst record in MLB with (at the time) 21 wins and 51 losses (since the article was published June 18, the Orioles have “improved” to a record of 22-58 (through June 26); they became the fourth-fastest team THIS CENTURY to lose 50 games (and two of the other teams were also the Orioles, according to Berg.

He laments the team trading away Manny Machado, who he refers to as “the best player they’ve developed since Cal Ripken, and notes that only one of the five players received in exchange for Machado is playing well. Manny just visited Baltimore asa member of the San Diego Padres and killed us with his bat and his glove. No surprise there.

So, the main take-away seems to be that if you’re going to be bad, be the best (worst?) bad you can possibly be.

Perhaps Michael Givens can set the record for the most blown saves. Chris Davis can take two titles with Most Strikeouts Ever and Lowest Batting Average Ever. Maybe a third title could be Highest Paycheck Given for Lousy Performance. The collective pitching staff can be proud of the most homers ever given up by a team. Maybe the team can even boast about having the largest single-season decline in ticket sales. Think about it — the possibilities are endless.

Gotta go — need to rest up for tonight's game!

Fly like an 'Iggle'

The Dundalk Eagle is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. 

This milestone and subsequent anniversaries will always have a connection to my life and career in journalism.

After working a largely unfulfilling government job for too many years of my relative youth, I threw caution to the wind and in April 1999, applied for a reporter position at the Eagle.

A second interview resulted in a job offer and I started at the paper on May 5. My first issue - that of May 13, 1999 - celebrated the "Iggle's" 30th anniversary and paid homage both to the vision and perseverance of founder Kimbel Oelke and the storied history, people, organizations and events of Greater Dundalk.

I had two bylines in the paper that week as the result of two evening assignments on my first day. I first covered an event at the North Point Library and then headed to a fundraiser at Sparrows Point Middle School.

My more senior reporter colleagues wrote much of the anniversary coverage that they had been working on for several weeks.

As a result of that career change, I began paying closer attention to local media coverage and I read the work of other reporters as on-the-job training. I learned to craft better leads, how to build stories and what questions to ask, all by reading the work of others.

Much has changed in those 20 years, in terms of the creation and delivery of news content, even if many of the messages remain the same. The Columbine High School shootings were still a raw, painful current event in May 1999, and 20 years later, it seems as though we read about a domestic mass shooting at least weekly.

Image courtesy of Dundalk Eagle Facebook page

The art of journalism has changed, thanks to the evolution of increasingly powerful and speedy computers, smart phones and other devices, to say nothing of digital cameras.

When I first started at the Eagle, we still shot with film cameras. I'd take my trusty Pentax K 1000 to an event, shoot photos, do my interviews and, on my way back to the North Center Place office, drop the film at Rite Aid's hour processing desk. It was always disappointing to discover that, in each of 10 images, at least one person always had closed eyes.

I worked full time for the Eagle as a reporter, columnist and associate editor until late 2007 and was fortunate to continue writing the Talk of the Town column as a freelancer through 2008.

Over those years, I had the privilege of sitting in living rooms, classrooms and board rooms, covering events and meetings in every nook and cranny in Turner Station, Dundalk, Edgemere and Fort Howard. From parades and festivals to community meetings and political events and elections, the Eagle was there.

During my Eagle tenure, I was honored to win more writing and photography awards than I can remember from state, regional and national journalism organizations. Those awards as judged by my professional peers allowed me to slowly drop my feelings of not being a "real journalist," having been a recreation and parks supervisor for the first half of my working life.

I grew accustomed to people saying the Eagle covered their lives from cradle to grave. For many residents, their scrapbooks started with a clipping of a birth announcement and continued with kindergarten graduation photos, Little League team action, dance recital recaps, news of academic and athletic awards, high school and college graduations, job promotions, engagement and wedding announcements, followed by the birth announcements of their own children and obituaries for their parents. All published by the loyal local newspaper.

I have special memories of a few memorable people I was honored to meet through my Eagle travels.

I "discovered "  now world-famous, highly decorated Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long. The Middle River resident was a plucky 11-year-old when I met her. The double, below-the-knee amputee was a member of the Dundalk-Eastfield Swim Club, a local recreation council team that practiced at CCBC Dundalk. She competed against normally abled swimmers, and while she never won races, she consistently honed her technique and lowered her race times.

It didn't take the U.S. Olympic Committee's Paralympic division long to notice her. As a 12-year-old, she was the youngest member of the Paralympic team to go to Athens in 2004. While the experts told her to set realistic goals and use the meet as a learning experience, she came home from Greece with three gold medals tucked carefully in her suitcase.

She has since competed in the Paralympics in Beijing, London and Rio de Janiero and is training for 2020's gathering in Tokyo. She has traveled the world, made lifelong friends and met presidents at the White House as a result of her Paralympic experience.

I also spent many column inches covering a local community college chancellor who was an unpopular leader who was perceived as being too authoritarian and intimidated folks who were "not on his train." I was celebrated by the community when he "resigned."

While Jessica's story is more high profile than most, it is symbolic of the tens of thousands of stories the Eagle has shared with the community in its 50 glorious years. From quirky hobbies to volunteerism, from unique jobs to community activism, everyone has a story and community journalism specializes in telling the stories that won't end up in a major metropolitan daily.

The creation of the Eagle is itself a story of passion, dedication and perhaps a bit of temporary insanity.

As shared by Oelke family members, Mr. Oelke had grown increasingly frustrated by a local paper that was giving a smaller and smaller voice to Dundalk as it spread out to cover other parts of Baltimore County. The legend holds that, after mulling his options, Mr. Oelke asked for his beloved wife Mary's blessing to essentially sink their life savings in a new venture to be known as the Dundalk Eagle.

To say it was a big risk for the couple, who would eventually have 11 children, is an understatement.

But obviously the experiment took, with the paper enjoying a high circulation rate and successful advertising sales through the salad years of journalism.

The Eagle was owned by Oelke's heirs until 2015, when it was sold to an out-of-state publishing group with newspapers in many different states.

Much has been said over at least the past 10 years about the perceived changes in Eagle coverage. Because of a cruel economy, the pages are physically smaller and there are fewer of them in each issue. (I have memories of staff struggling to fill 56- and 64-page issues). 

There are fewer writers now on staff (during my tenure, the paper boasted four full-time reporters, a photographer, an editor and an editorial assistant/community announcement writer). Seven full-time editorial staff members for a community weekly! Unheard of today.

Fewer writers naturally means fewer events can be covered and fewer invitations are accepted. A smaller page count means less room to tell stories.

But let me tell you this, as the Eagle celebrates this significant milestone. No matter who owns the paper, no matter how few pages each issue contains, no matter how many stories don't get told, it is important to support it. 

Subscribe to the print edition. If you're an environmentalist and don't want the physical paper, subscribe to the online version. The Eagle has a fairly user-friendly website, which also offers an electronic version, page for page, of each week's paper.

Because here's the deal. This country is losing too many papers, which translates to too many communities losing their media voices. In addition to never learning about a resident's collection of owls, the loss of papers and journalists snuffs out the light needed to expose crime and corruption.

We are living through a good example of the results of competent, old-fashioned, shoe-leather investigative reporting.

The discovery of Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh's perceived unsavory transactions with the University of Maryland Medical System is the result of Baltimore Sun reporters digging through UMMS Board of Directors records.

Their reporting uncovered the financial trail involving the purchase of books authored by Pugh, and shined a light on the conflict of interest involved.

Without reporting like that, corruption will not get uncovered. I would dare say that corruption would increase without the threat of reporters digging deep into obscure, boring reports.

While every other news outlet picked up on the work of the Sun reporters, it's important to acknowledge that the Sun bankrolled those reporters and provided them with paychecks while allowing them the needed time to dig out that story. 

I hear less informed folks say that journalism will never go away, and then they point to bloggers, YouTubers and Instagrammers as examples to support their argument.

I disagree. I don't know a single blogger or vlogger putting in 40 hours a week performing real, credible, researched and vetted journalism. Most, if not all, of those folks have full-time jobs elsewhere and are hobbyists when it comes to writing. Many are deliberately inflammatory and write essays or produce videos designed to stir up crap, pit groups against one another and spread false information.

No community paper can do it all. There will always be folks who are disappointed that the editor didn't buy their story pitch; that a photo didn't get published as quickly as they wanted; or that a story missed the mark.

But any community paper is better than no community paper. Support the Dundalk Eagle (or whatever your local paper is) while it's still here to support.

I personally know all too well the pain of a news outlet closing. I'm involuntarily retired because of the East County Times' demise. And I know the loss suffered by the community, which lost a well-written, objective, accurate voice for a diverse community.

Fifty years for any mom-and-pop business to thrive and survive is an accomplishment of which to be proud. 

For a plucky, salt-of-the-earth community weekly to survive that long, to say nothing of weathering the past 15 cruel years, says the product is needed and wanted.

Local journalism might be on life support, but each of you has the opportunity to serve as an IV bag. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe.

Support the patient while it's sick and can still recover. If the funeral's being planned, it's too late.

Congratulations to the Eagle's current and former owners and staff members. I'm proud to have played a small role in the history of such a storied and respected institution, and wish it at least 50 more years.