Summary of Wallyhood Community Meeting, 8 January

On January 8th, the editorial staff at Wallyhood held one of our irregular gatherings with writers, potential writers and editors, and any other curious or interested community members. The Blue Star Café graciously hosted us in their back room and kept us fueled with IPA and appetizers. The purpose of the meeting was, as usual, to recruit and engage. We successfully lured in around ten friends and neighbors to sit with the four of us editors for around an hour and a half. We reviewed the past year, discussed opportunities to get involved with the blog, and then chewed the proverbial fat about potential new story ideas and neighborhood issues in general.

The word clouds below reflect the 2024 Wallyhood year from a writers’ perspective. We posted a total of 178 stories, written by 22 different authors. The first cloud shows that the editors contributed a lot of stories; the second word cloud reflects the contributions of non-editor writers.

It’s always gratifying to those of us who sit in the editors’ chairs to hear from folks on the other side of the divide—because sometimes we wonder if anybody is listening*. And as a rule, we emerge from these get togethers a little more energized and hopeful, because they affirm that there remains a strong sense of community in Wallingford and a belief that connection helps to nurture this feeling.

The stories you see on this blog do not, of course, magically appear. (Would that they did!) Rather, they represent the work of volunteer editors and writers giving their time for this neighborhood. If you glance right (or scroll down, depending on what type of device you are reading this on), you’ll see the words, “Wallyhood needs you!” That is not a relic left over from some lean years that are far behind us. We really could use some help in both the writing and editing departments. Writers compose their stories within our wordpress environment. Editors either read, edit and post these stories or work running down stories and soliciting writers to write them. Time commitment for editors is about 3 hours per week, but editors work only about 2 weeks out of every 6 (until we get more!!). Writers make their own hours. Please consider joining us by contacting us at: [email protected].

In the meantime, Editor Jack is working on distilling a list of story ideas, and adding interested people to our writers’ list. We look forward to a new year of fresh insights, stories, and voices, and hope that those of you who could not attend the meeting will let us know so that we can invite you to join us!

 

*Although, it’s true that if we even whisper anything about bike lanes, off-leash dogs, neighborhood upzoning, and…converting parks into athletic fields…we learn that there is a lot of pent-up commentary energy out there.