Joining forces for a louder voice

The Mercury, like most community newspapers its size, has not traditionally had an editorial board  of writers who determine and produce Opinion pieces for the paper and its related digital sites.
When people have called requesting an interview with "the editorial board," I tell them they're already talking to it.
Part of my job as editor is being a one-person editorial board. I write "Our View," sometimes after discussing it with a reporter or other editor.  Mostly, I write Opinion pieces that I believe reflect the tone and stance of our paper and that celebrate or ask for correction of a community issue.
We're not alone in this challenge. The Mercury is part of a larger network of media sites known as Digital First Media. That network includes papers as different from us as The Denver Post and as similar as The Times Herald in Norristown and Daily Local News in West Chester.
It allows us to share resources, including editorials which we have often published with a tag line showing authorship.
You may have noticed in recent weeks that those tag lines no longer appear.
That's because The Mercury is now part of a Digital First Media Pennsylvania Editorial Board. The editorial board contributions reflect a collective opinion of the nine newspapers that make up the board.
The newspapers are The Mercury, Times Herald, Daily Local News, Delaware County Daily Times, The (Lansdale) Reporter, York Daily Record, Chambersburg Public Opinion, Lebanon Daily News and Hanover Evening Sun.
The group "meets" by phone once a week to discuss common issues to Pennsylvania and the region. They decide on topics for editorials and on who will write them. Each contributor makes the editorial available to the group via email, but there is no obligation for an individual site to publish what's provided. We still write our own local views and can reject a regional edit if we don't agree with its stance.
The board hopes to become a regional and state voice in government and on issues of common importance like nuclear power plants and the environment. The board last week interviewed Barry Schoch, who heads PennDOT, about the need for legislation to fix Pennsylvania's roads and bridges.
We have in the past interviewed Gov. Tom Corbett and Sen. Pat Toomey, and we hope to do more of that in the future.
Working as a group gives us a louder voice on issues in state and county government.
By sharing, we can bring our best and brightest to the forefront in writing Opinion pieces. We are also utilizing the talents of cartoonist Alan MacBain to accompany many of our editorials.
This is an exciting step forward for The Mercury, amplifying our voice on statewide issues that affect our local communities. Not every "Our View" will be on a  regional or statewide issue; we will continue to write Opinion pieces on issues of purely local interest. And, Friday's "Roses and Thorns" continues as our local means of giving cheers and boos.
We're excited about this change and hope that you, our readers, are, too. We want our opinions to inspire action that benefits you.
Be assured: Property tax reform is at the top of our list.

The balancing act

This was written as a guest post for Steve Buttry and also appears here:

I have a saying honed during 37 years in the news business: "Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow."
That may sound like encouragement to procrastinate or an excuse for laziness, but it's not. Put it in context of our work: We  build a product from start to finish in a day's time -- every day -- and with so much emphasis on what we have daily, we have to also know what we can set aside until tomorrow.
Consider the emails, the requests, the columns to write, stories to edit, projects to manage ... it doesn't end, diminish or slow down. So my thinking is that if something's not needed today, leave it for tomorrow.

This blog in its early days was called The Daily Overload because I was writing about the digital transformation in the news business and the daunting number of tasks involved.
I changed the name at some point because I didn't want to dwell on the overload; that in itself makes me tired.
Today's news comes at us at such a rapid pace that no matter how fast we run we can't get ahead of it. The risk is that we become like hamsters on a wheel.
In that environment, we need to give ourselves a break now and then and strive for balance. Being good editors -- smart editors -- comes from enjoying other endeavors in life, too. 
The ability to put work aside is a chore in itself requiring discipline and a daily commitment to find balance.

A few thoughts on how to do that:

• Pay yourself first. This is a truism of financial management that can be adopted to time management as well. Do something for yourself first thing in the day before you start working. Once you get into the newsroom, the beast takes over. For years, I went for a 3- to 5-mile run in my neighborhood after getting the kids off to school and before I came into the office. These days, I bike to work. On days I don't ride, I do yoga at home. I pay myself first with an exercise investment before I feed the hungry news beast. The day starts better.
• Use deadlines to your advantage.  This advice from my friend Michelle Karas, editor of The Bennington Banner: Join a fitness class or a book group that meets a specific time. If you commit to being in class at 7, you have a deadline to leave work at 6:45. Gets better results than vowing to "go to the gym after work."
• Keep everything in its place. When at home, put the laptop away and spend time with the people in your life, a good book, a movie, or cooking dinner -- something to be enjoyed. Show with your actions that life outside the newsroom matters. When in the newsroom, don't let demands from your personal life consume your time. Instead of promoting balance, the interruptions can add to the overload.
• Make time for joy. "Joy" may be listening to music. Or brewing a batch of beer. Or a walk in the woods. Whatever it is, make it a point every day, or as near to that as possible. Find the balance between the awesome responsibility of being an editor and the lighter side of life.
• When the adrenaline hits, run with it. On days when a big news story happens, the above words of wisdom go out the window. As editors, our job remains the director of the band when it comes to delivering news to our communities. Those days, everything else takes a backseat. Just run with it. Get back to balance the next day.

Balance isn't putting in the background the important work of being editors. It is, however, remembering that without health and emotional well-being, mental and physical energy suffers.
Achieving balance helps us become better, more productive editors. 

A really cool idea, or two

"Do you know what would be really cool?"
These words from Mercury reporter Brandie Kessler were usually followed by:
"I know you probably don't want to do this, and you can say this is a dumb idea -- you're the boss, you do what you want, but I was just thinking wouldn't it be cool if ..."
A soliloquy along those lines preceded a number of really cool ideas that we have embraced at The Mercury and turned to successes for this newspaper and the community of the Pottstown area.
We collected more than 16,000 food items for area food pantries and nearly 1,000 containers of laundry detergent by joining efforts with TownSquare bloggers to spread the word about dwindling food supplies last winter.
Cool idea.
We created a Pinterest board of Most Wanted criminals in area police departments, getting pictures out to the public on a platform they use. Tips have led to arrests, which make police happy and make us proud.
Cool idea.
We are posting cards with donors' names to Operation Holiday on the window of The Mercury Community Media Lab as a colorful display and a thank you to the readers who send us thousands of dollars for our holiday giving program.
Another cool idea.
Brandie's coolest idea, at least in her mind, was raising money for the Pottstown Relay for Life by taking donations to pie a Mercury employee in the face at the Bark for Life event. The 2008 collection raised $2,700 and gave Brandie the opportunity to throw a banana cream pie in my face.

 I have had some cool ideas for Brandie, as well. One of them was sending her on the river with the Schuylkill River Sojourn last summer to live-blog four days of the river journey, traveling in her kayak, tweeting and taking video along the way.

Dedicated police reporter that she is, she fought me on leaving the office for a week to enjoy the outdoors.
I prevailed, and the blog was a gem.
Another idea I recently had was that she apply for a reporting job at our larger sister paper, the York Daily Record/Sunday News. I had learned about the job from colleagues at York, and I told her it was an opportunity she should not pass up. At least go for the interview, I insisted.
Again, the retorts that there are too many stories in Pottstown still to write, too much work still to be done.
But she went, and the rest, as they say, is history. Sunday was her last official day at The Mercury. She stopped in Monday though and I expect to see her again this week.
Brandie is one of a kind.
Her passion for reporting, her dedication to this craft, her persistence for excellence and her fearsome loyalty to her colleagues and others around her is unmatched.
That's why we already miss her.

There's a warning here, too, for our friends at YDR: Get ready for cool ideas.
And watch out.
You could end up with banana cream on your face. 

Learning value of education from those who missed out

I was raised with the importance of reading and writing drilled into my life by two people who learned the hard way.
My parents, both born in the middle of large families, had to quit school after the 8th grade. My dad had to work full-time on the family farm; my mom was needed at home to help care for younger siblings and to start earning a wage doing housework for others.
Both families were poor in dollars, rich in lessons that my parents passed on to me and my brothers.
Education was a privilege denied them, and that made its value so much greater. As parents, they never let us forget it.
I've seen the emphasis passed on among my cousins, a message strengthened through my parents' generation by the hardship it took to acquire it.
I didn't realize until much later in my life that my parents were fortunate in what they took from those eight years of schooling, in both cases taught in rural one-room schools of the early 1920s.
My dad had flawless spelling and could write a good letter when he needed to; he was quick and adept at math, and served as president and treasurer of nearly every group he joined, including being an elected school board president and the treasurer of the Boyertown Area School Board during the era of expansion that included building the junior high west center.
He was surrounded by people much more learned than he, and yet he was often at the head of the table in clubs, the church consistory and sports teams.
Although he worked at Doehler-Jarvis as his day job, he ran his own taxidermy business in our basement, having learned the trade through distance learning by mail.
My mom's lack of education showed in her spelling, but it didn't stop her from communicating well. She spelled things phonetically, a trait that brings a smile upon reading her handwritten recipes for "punkin" pie or "dumplins."
She had insights and an understanding of people and situations coupled with a desire to keep learning. When my brothers were in college, she borrowed some of their textbooks as leisure reading. She particularly liked psychology courses.
She emphasized always that we have books in our home and in our lives as children. But even more important to her were "educational" toys, as she called them. Of course I had my share of dolls and my brothers had plenty of sports gear, but she made a point of insisting that blocks, puzzles, word games, and books were more important.
We were raised knowing we would go to college. It was a rule that my mother enforced. Although I didn't know it until my parents were in their twilight years and I was settled into my adult life, my dad had at one time thought a college degree wasn't necessary for me because I would "just get married and have a family."
My mother prevailed with her philosophy: "You can lose the people around you; your job can end. But no one can take away your education."
Her strong stand molded my future.
My parents knew from experience that education does not come easily to everyone.That's what the Pottstown adult literacy program is about. It benefits people whose lives did not start easily, and it has the potential to further those opportunities we know come from education.
Pottstown's literacy effort needs your help.
With just a few minutes of your time, you can sign on to support the Adult Literacy Program. A donor will give $1 for every signature as submitted on the following form. 
Those dollars will go a long way to buy materials and help people learning to read. My mother would call this effort "educational;" I call it a second chance.
Sign on to support our program: Pottstown reads.

From Agnes to Sandy: How we cover a hurricane

Our staff at a news site in Pottstown where the Philly suburbs complete their turn to rural Pennsylvania rarely covers a hurricane. We have our share of flooding on the Schuylkill River and large creeks -- Perkiomen, Manatawny, French Creek  -- and sometimes the effects of hurricanes have been involved.
Last year, Irene caused some evacuations and flooding of the Perkiomen at Collegeville and Graterford. We had some Floyd-aftermath flooding in 1999, and I remember writing headlines about the approach of Gloria some years back.
But for full-fledged hurricane reporting, we have to go back 40 years to Hurricane Agnes.
Until this week and Sandy.
Like Agnes in June, 1972, Sandy set her sights on New York and New Jersey, and slammed Pennsylvania in-between with gale-force winds and drenching rain.
The AP reported winds reached 81 miles per hour in Allentown; Hanover, Pa. got 8.15 inches of rain.
Twelve deaths were reported in Pennsylvania, several of them from carbon monoxide poisoning from generators.
In our area, a 62-year-old man was killed when a tree crashed through his porch roof while he was taking the dogs out.
The biggest difference between reporting a hurricane and reporting some after-effects like flooding is the breadth of the storm and the dangers to ourselves.
When I send reporters over to South Pottstown to report on damage to the homes along the Schuylkill River, I tell them to wear boots, protect cameras and stay out of deep water.
But on Monday with Sandy "looming large," the warnings were more stern. We put a plan in place to keep paginators and online producers at home, as long as their power lasted. We bought car chargers for laptops; put fresh batteries in flashlights; kept cell phones fully charged.

Reporters and photographers and two editors were in the office, coordinating coverage. We planned a front page by phone, brainstormed headlines like we always do, but in phone and email instead of in person. We kept website, Facebook, Twitter and mobile sites up to date.
By 8 p.m. Monday night, we closed up at the offices and drove home just as the wind speeds were picking up. Two people were on alert to go out overnight if they got word of a water rescue, fire or building collapse. The message was: Don't go out for flooding or wind damage. That can wait until daybreak. Don't risk going out in this wind unless it's a disaster that demands immediate reporting.
By Tuesday, many of us had lost power in our homes, but The Mercury did not. Neither did the offices of our sister sites in the Philly cluster, except Montgomery Media and a portion of the Delco Daily Times building.
To be sure, not all systems were working perfectly due to the devastation Sandy caused around us, in New York City and the Jersey shore. But for the most part, we could work.
The greatest damage here were giant trees uprooted, wires down and limbs everywhere. Fortunately, none of our staffers suffered damage to their homes except for some damaged gutters and broken tree limbs. The inconvenience of losing cable or Internet or lights and TV is minor compared to what we witnessed at the beach and in New York City.
Ironically, Sandy stormed our way the year of the 40th anniversary of Agnes and a recap of that coverage. There was no comparison to the devastation caused by Agnes, but the approach was the same.
When we pulled out the old Agnes papers for research last summer, we noticed there were no bylines in those editions, just a box that said everyone on staff contributed to everything they produced.
That's how The Mercury covered a hurricane 40 years ago.
With a bit of sarcasm and some silliness, our staffers like to say "there's no I in team." (I won't repeat the second half of their slogan about three "u"s.) 
That's how we covered Sandy, and why it was different than a normal storm. 
The bylines don't matter in a hurricane; the team effort does.  

Free hot dogs!

The Mercury Community Media Lab is up and running and open for business, with regular hours four days a week and an open invitation to reserve it for community events.
Diane Hoffman, community engagement editor, has been assisting residents in using the computers for job searches, and some folks have stopped by to say hi and check out the newly remodeled space at 24 N. Hanover St.
But that's just the beginning.
Our current hours, 11 to 2, Monday through Thursday, are "summer hours," recognizing there is not as much demand for a cup of coffee and a lesson in blogging during a heat wave. We'll be expanding and offering more open hours going forward.
Next Tuesday evening, Aug. 7, 6 to 8 p.m., we will be hosting a meeting of our Town Square bloggers' network to introduce them to the potential uses of our Media Lab, and the public is invited.
Anyone with an interest in blogging or in learning what our Community Media Lab offers is welcome.
And since Tuesday happens to be the observance of National Night Out, we're also partnering with two of our Hanover Street neighbors to offer food, music, and exercise.
We will be grilling in the drive-through area of The Mercury with free hot dogs for anyone who visits, as long as supplies last.
Manning the grill will be Mercury staffer and Town Square blogger Evan Brandt, @PottstownNews.
Across the street, CrossFit Pottstown and owner Rob Matthews will offer free CrossFit classes during the hours of 6 to 8 p.m.
A DJ will be playing music on the sidewalk in front of the Community Media Lab, courtesy of Matthews and CrossFit Pottstown.
Also across the street, the Pottstown Downtown Improvement District Authority will have the Visitor's Center open with information about their new website, "Proudly Pottstown," and a display of old Pottstown photos.
In the Media Lab, bloggers will be sharing ideas on how to use the features of the lab for community outreach. Anyone who visits will be able to learn about the lab and about Town Square and how to start or network a blog.
Among the uses of the Media Lab are:
--readily available information about Pottstown, including maps of recreation areas and historic places to visit in the region,
--a Community Share bulletin board to post events, jobs, items for sale,
--gallery display of newspaper photos and front pages showcasing historic moments in Pottstown,
--lending library of books (we have some great summer reads!) with Mercury staff "picks",
--microfilm to research 85 years of issues of The Mercury,
--free Wi-Fi for your laptops or the use of three computers,
--Internet TV for small-group training purposes,
--coffee bar, and
--access to Mercury staff for assistance with computer searches.

The lab is available for use by community groups for forums or small meetings. We hope to see groups like SCORE use the space for a small-business workshop on social media, for example, or a neighborhood group invite school board candidates in for a Q&A.
We would like to see students from the Gallery on High or the Pottstown School District use our computers -- and start blogs to share with the community.
We're open for business and we want to show off what we have to offer.
Come by and visit: Tuesday night, Aug. 7, 6 to 8 p.m., 24 N. Hanover St., Pottstown.

Hands across Hanover Street

Next Friday, July 20, we are opening our remodeled Community Media Lab, one of a dozen or so open newsroom projects of Digital First Media, parent company of The Mercury.
The lab, once offices of The PennyPincher, has been remodeled and refurnished into a coffeehouse atmosphere. We're not quite finished but when we are, it will be equipped with computers, microfilm, Internet TV and free Wi-Fi.
The grand opening next Friday is being held simultaneously with the opening of a new Pottstown Visitor's Center across Hanover Street from our entrance.
Pottstown Borough Council approved our request to close the block of Hanover Street for part of the day so we can stretch a ribbon across the street between the two sites for a joint ribbon-cutting ceremony.
We'll have food donated by local restaurants at the visitor's center, which is home to the Pottstown Downtown Improvement District Authority and the Main Street manager, and more food (DESSERTS!) in our media lab.
The joint ribbon cutting will include speeches by Pottstown Mayor Bonnie Heath and Digital First Media Director of Community Engagement Steve Buttry, among others.

***

We learned in early spring that we were named as one of the sites for a DFM-sponsored community outreach project. The impetus for our selection was the success of our community food drive that collected more than 16,000 food items and nearly 700 bottles of laundry detergent in just five weeks. The food drive showcased the partnership of The Mercury and community bloggers with the greater Pottstown area community to accomplish a goal.

As we began working on our remodeling plans, we also learned that PDIDA and Main Street Manager Sheila Dugan were planning a similar remodeling across the street in the building that was the first home of this newspaper when it was founded in 1932 and was later site of Longacre's Jewelers and then a podiatrist's office. We decided to cross the street, bridge the divide and join forces with the downtown business group to reach out to our community.

"Someone had a vision of people working, collaborating and succeeding together in a place that promoted our community."



The theme of our joint ceremony is to reinforce old partnerships and introduce a new initiative in both community engagement and improvement.
Part of the emphasis in our grand opening is the "Buy Local" campaign growing in popularity in U.S. towns like this one.
The opening of our Community Media Lab is part of a two-day downtown Pottstown promotion focused on a Sidewalk Sale on Saturday, July 21. Our new site will be open to the public, and anyone who brings a receipt from shopping local that day will get a chance to win prizes in the downtown raffles being conducted throughout the sale event.

***

The Community Media Lab was designed to celebrate this newspaper's relationship with the town and surrounding area. We are opening our archives to visitors and making available microfilm of 80 years of publishing. On the walls is a photo display of some of our favorite newspaper photos over the years, reflecting life in the towns we cover. We will have free Wi-Fi, Internet TV, coffee and cold drinks available, a lending library of books (with recommendations for reading from our editors and bloggers) and computers for public use.
The space can be used to blog, work on a resume, research. You can ask us for help starting a blog, you can schedule a meeting of your writers group, you can knit, you can read, or you can just stop in to say hi, pick up a map of the Schuylkill River Trail or post a help-wanted notice on the Community Share bulletin board.
The Mercury has been a resource used in the lives of our readers for 80 years; this opening marks the start of a new era of engagement and working together.

"Hands were joined, ideas were shared and what started as an idea has become a partnership dedicated to a commonly held faith in new growth and new vitality for Pottstown."

Please join us. 

Making a difference on Mothers Day

The card companies, florists and restaurants will have you believe Mother's Day is just for gifts and pampering. The tributes and thanks are important, and don't get me wrong, this is not a pass for my children to forget to call, write or send flowers on Sunday, May 13. But Mother's Day can be more than being pampered -- for some, it's a chance to celebrate and champion what mothers do best -- care, nurture, effect change, and make a difference. I have for many Mother's Days run in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K in Philadelphia. Getting up at 5:30 a.m., driving to Philly to participate with more than 100,000 people running through the streets may not sound like fun to everyone, but it is a treasured tradition for me. I can think of no better way to celebrate Mother's Day than to spend a few hours outdoors with families honoring the women in their lives, or like me, remembering one who lost a battle with breast cancer. Two years ago, I spent Mother's Day moving our eldest child to a new life in New Haven, Ct. Nothing like celebrating motherhood by pushing a child out of the nest. And, last year, I ran the Race for the Cure with my daughter six days before witnessing her graduation at Ursinus College. This year proves to be another adventure in nurturing: the Mother's Day cleanup by The Mercury and friends to protect Mother Earth. The Mercury staff, under the coordination of Community Engagement Editor Diane Hoffman, is embarking on a spring cleanup of Ganshahawny Park in Douglass (Berks) Township. The cleanup area was found with the help of the Schuylkill Action Network and the votes of our readers on Facebook. The Schuylkill Scrub organization is providing trash bags and reflector vests, and several people have volunteered to help. We had some concerns about scheduling the cleanup on Mother's Day, but the timing from 8 to 10 a.m. shouldn't interfere too much with anyone's brunch plans. Getting muddy and picking up trash may not seem to some like a good way to spend Mother's Day. I think it's perfect: playing in the dirt with kids and doing something to make the world a cleaner, more cared-for place. Isn't that the best part of being a Mom? To volunteer to help The Mercury make our “Mother Earth” a little brighter this Mother’s Day, contact Diane Hoffman at dhoffman@pottsmerc.com or call 610-323-3000 ext. 156. Or show up. These are directions from The Mercury to the park (B):
View Larger Map

A little help goes a long way

Our challenge to "Fill the Media Lab" has taken on many twists in the past week, leading to bloggers, businesses and food pantries near and to readers afar.
We have one donation from a young woman in Ohio who heard about the drive waiting in a checkout line at The Dollar Store. (More about that later.)
We made a delivery Friday to the Pottstown Cluster Outreach Center of 136 food items, 3 shampoo-soap items and 24 bottles of detergent. These were just the items brought by individuals and by The Sanatoga Post blogger Joe Zlomek to our offices at Hanover and King streets. More items are being collected elsewhere.
We're trying to keep a count, so if your church or scout troop or business is collecting and taking items directly to the food pantry of your choice, please let us know the number of items so we can add to the list. The Challenge is for 20,000 items by Passover-Easter.
We know of collection sites set up at Schuylkill Valley Sporting Goods stores, Penn Liberty Bank in Limerick, Patt Veterinary and Pet Valu in Gilbertsville, Joe Paws in Boyertown, Pottstown Roller Mills, Evergreen Consignment Shop and Grumpy's Hand-carved Sandwiches at the Pottstown Farmer's Market.
There are others, and as we learn about them, we add to the map.
(See below)
The student council and the prep classes at St. Aloysius school and church are getting collection drives started.
Several churches, including First Presbyterian Church and the youth group of Zion's United Church of Christ, has current food drives in place that may get a boost from word spreading about the Challenge.
The items won't all be going to the Pottstown Cluster. Blogger Laura Catalano has written about the need at the Norco Food Pantry and has established a collection site at the Schuylkill River Heritage Area office at Riverfront Park. We will also designate next week's collections at The Mercury for the Norco pantry.
Our sister paper The Phoenix has profiled need at Project Outreach in Royersford and Spring City, and we will deliver items there in the coming weeks as well.
Boyertown Area Multi-Service was featured in a video this week on our website, and several collection sites in the Boyertown area are designating items for that pantry.
In fact, it was a Boyertown area reader Marlene Fisher who shared the story about Ohio.
Fisher's daughter, Cheryl Knudson, lives in Aurora, Ohio, and was talking to her mother on the phone about a visit planned this weekend. As they were chatting, Fisher mentioned about the food drive she had read in Monday's Mercury, particularly the part about laundry detergent being like "liquid gold" to families who can't afford it.
Knudson, who says her neighborhood "dollar store" has great bargains, decided to pick up some laundry detergent and bring it back with her to Boyertown to donate to our cause. As she was making her purchase of 10 bottles of detergent, the clerk commented on the quantity. Knudson recounted what her mother had told her from our news story.
"When I got to the part about the little girl who put aside a box of cookies in favor of getting soap for her clothes, the woman behind me said, 'Excuse me, can I give to that charity?' " Knudson recalled.
"I told her it was in Pennsylvania, but she insisted. She said she could write a check and I could bring it back with me."
Knudson phoned her mother from the store and they decided to have the check made out to a Pottstown church. The church could get the money to a food pantry.
That was Wednesday. Knudson drove from Aurora to her mother's home here on Thursday. On Friday, mother and daughter delivered 10 bottles of detergent and a $20 check.
Thanks to "Lauren" in the dollar store for joining our challenge.

For more on Fill the Media Lab, go to The Sanatoga Post, Positively Pottstown, 52 Ways to Wake Up a Week, and Tails of Two Dogs.

To donate, visit any of our bloggers' collection sites or bring food to The Mercury Community Media Lab, Hanover and King streets in Pottstown.

'Fill the Media Lab:' A local effort to fight hunger

Last Thursday night a group of bloggers for Town Square, the network we feature as part of The Mercury website, joined us in a Community Media Lab event here. We had about 15 people, about half of them interested in learning about blogging and the others current bloggers with us.
The meeting turned to discussion of a community service project, suggested to me by our police reporter Brandie Kessler, to involve bloggers in collecting food for struggling food pantries in the area.
The inspiration for this idea was a news story and editorial two weeks ago highlighting shortages in food pantries as a result of high food prices driving up demand and pulling down donations.
Since our bloggers represent the individual communities we cover -- Royersford, Boyertown, North Coventry, Birdsboro, Phoenixville -- and since they have networks and followers throughout the region, we thought "Why not leverage those connections and pool resources into public service?"
Why not "fill the media lab" with enough food to feed area families? According to some food pantry managers we consulted, 20,000 items would provide food for about 200 families for a month, or 100 families over two months.
The goal is to collect for the 40 days of Lent and reach 20,000 by April 7-8, the weekend of Passover and Easter. We don't want to hold on to the food we collect and give it all at once -- that would hurt the pantries between now and then -- but rather "count" items and "pin" pictures of them to a board on Pinterest.
We want to fill the digital media lab while stocking the pantries of our towns.
The bloggers at the meeting were enthusiastic and anxious to get going so we launched the plan today in the print and online versions of The Mercury. Already, Joe Zlomek, our friend at The Sanatoga Post, has come on board.
We're getting suggestions by email for collection sites, including fitness centers and college dining halls. With this post, we're pinning the first food donations to the board. And the count is on ... eight items in, 19,942 to go!
As a sidebar, we are collecting laundry detergent for the pantries as well. Our goal is 1,000 containers of laundry detergent.
Please join us in this effort. You can bring non-perishable food items to The Mercury at Hanover and King streets in Pottstown, or you can send us a photo and a count and take the items directly to an area food pantry. Check out the blogs on Town Square and find the one that serves your community to participate at a collection site named on the blog.
Keep following us from now until Passover and Easter as we work together to fight hunger in our towns.

Shop downtown Pottstown and be surprised

I remember as a child the holiday-season thrill of going into The New York Store in downtown Pottstown on a Friday night, walking to the lower floor among the bustling crowd and seeing Santa greeting children, taking names and promising wishes.
I remember Town Toy, gazing in wonder at the assortment of games, Matchbox cars and Barbie clothes.
If my brothers wanted new baseball mitts, we went to Bechtel's. If my Dad was shopping for a special gift for my Mom, it was Longacre's jewelry store.
By the time I was in junior high, Kessler's clothing and Boyer's shoes were the places to get wool skirts and sweaters and Bass Weejuns.
Those stores -- and the dozens of others such as Ellis Mills, Wolf's China and Glass, H.F. Smith and Son stationery -- were locally owned. They were the small businesses around which Pottstown's downtown thrived.
Today, Weitzenkorn's remains with a fifth generation recently joining the family business, but others are gone. High Street is struggling.
But I am not writing this to lament the days gone by. Rather, to remind readers that High Street still has a healthy sampling of locally-owned shops and offers a rewarding shopping experience.
You just have to come downtown to find it.
Within just three blocks on High Street, you can find gifts for the skateboarder and bicyclist on your list. Warrick Jewelers not only has a fine selection of jewelry and gift items, but the owner and employees are without a doubt the friendliest clerks you will find anywhere.
You can buy gift certificates to theater at TriPAC, dinner at Funky L'il Kitchen or Henry's; plan your holiday parties with catering from Positively Pasta or Grumpy's in the Farmer's Market; buy fresh seafood at Mosteller's and fresh meats (try the pork and apple sausage) at the Market's butcher stand.
You won't find a better selection or more personal service in fine clothing than at Weitzenkorn's. Why shop Victoria's Secret when you can get unique lingerie at Jean's?
There are two bakery shops, two formalwear stores, and a variety of lunch spots, my favorites being The Very Best, Positively Pasta and The Brickhouse.
There are specialty shops for clocks, health foods and at The Gallery on High, you can find paintings, art supplies and an impressive selection of quality hand-crafted jewelry.
Who else carries the range of camping and outdoors gear that the Army-Navy store has in stock? You can even plan a room remodeling project at Ranieri's Paint and Floor Coverings.
Some may say that shopping in downtown Pottstown is "scary" because the streets are devoid of shoppers and those who are out feel vulnerable. I turn that on its head: What's scary is that the streets are devoid of shoppers and the town is vulnerable as a result.
I prefer shopping downtown. I like the walk and the personal service from shop owners. I like that the guy who sells me a bike will also service it and explain the mechanics to me. I like that a piece of jewelry is unique and crafted here and sold in an arts school.
I like trading recipe ideas with the Mostellers and conversation with the Fosters at Positively Pasta.
Saturday is Small Business Saturday, a promotion sponsored by American Express and supported by Fed-Ex, Google, Facebook and local business groups. In conjunction with the national effort, a group in Pottstown is organizing a "Holiday Shopping March" to support small business and focus on locally-owned stores.
The group will meet at 10 a.m. at Bistro 137, 137 E. High St., and embark on a shopping tour of the downtown.
Last holiday season, I made it a goal to buy at least one thing downtown. I ended up buying quite a few.
Think about it: You can get up in the middle of the night to stand in line for an electronics item that will be broken or obsolete in six months. Or, you can take a stroll on High Street and learn why the bike or skateboard or clock or watch or painting you buy has lasting value.
Your purchase might buy Pottstown a second chance.