This past week, I had the pleasure of speaking to a large group at the Family Life Center at First Baptist Church. It was a meaningful time to share the heart behind MVNow, and, as I often do during our citizen journalist trainings, I brought a story to tie it all together. For this group, I talked about running a race; drawing on a birthday party for my eight-year-old son’s friend, and tying it back to a former student from my time teaching at the high school.
As we step into a new week, we’re also approaching an exciting milestone: the first full month of MVNow. Thinking again about running a race and running it well, I’m reminded of something Ken Greer, our treasurer, often says: "Many hands make light work."
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working diligently behind the scenes, smoothing out platform hiccups, refining workflows, and communicating almost daily with our growing group of citizen journalists. I genuinely enjoy encouraging contributors to submit articles, reading every word they write, and even catching the occasional grammatical error. If my high school English teachers could see me now, they might be surprised.
But the truth is, we need more voices.
There is so much happening across Mount Vernon that I simply can’t be everywhere at once. I can’t give every event, every organization, and every story the attention it deserves, not on my own. And that’s exactly why MVNow exists.
If you’ve read this far, I want to ask you to pause for a moment and reflect. What stories are happening around you? Is there an organization that could use encouragement? A neighbor whose efforts deserve to be recognized? A story in your family that could inspire others if it were simply written down and shared?
I want to hear those stories.
As I think back over this first month, I also think about the moments we’ve missed, the events we didn’t hear about, the stories that went untold. During my presentation, I held up a short piece of deep purple yarn, the color of our school. I stretched it between my fingers and told the audience, "This single thread represents your story." On its own, it can easily be lost, forgotten over time. But when it’s woven together with others, it becomes part of something lasting. A tapestry that tells the story of an entire community.
That’s what we’re building together.
There are still so many organizations I haven’t had the chance to visit, so many people I haven’t yet met, and so many stories waiting to be told. There is more work ahead, but as we reach this first-month milestone, I’m encouraged by what we’ve already accomplished.
Like any meaningful work, this takes time. It takes patience. It takes consistency. A tapestry isn’t built in a day, but it is being built, thread by thread.
Mount Vernon, will you join me?
If you or someone you know would be interested in becoming a citizen journalist, I’d love to connect. Scroll to the bottom of this page and click “Become a Citizen Journalist.”
I hope to hear from you soon!
