Cassie Meador sits in an open studio at the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. When she speaks, she seems unusually calm for someone taking over an internationally renowned dance company. But that might be because under her leadership the Dance Exchange will be focusing more on the town that it has called home base for the last 14 years. Meador plans to involve the community a lot more and tap into Takoma Park’s resources to inform her new projects. This means tapping into the environmental knowledge in the city. Her current choreographic project at the Dance Exchange, "How To Lose a Mountain," will …

A chime rings in story hour and Karen MacPherson sits down on the floor surrounded by moms and their young children. It’s an hour before the Takoma Park Library is set to open, but the children’s book room is full of attentive – and some not so attentive – babies. But the little ones have nothing on MacPherson, Takoma Park’s children’s librarian. Her energy is boundless and that stems from joy she gets from teaching kids. “I have the best job in the world,” she said. But MacPherson didn’t start out as a librarian. Her career up until five years ago was as a reporter for UPI and then Scripps. …

Monday and Tuesday I had a guest editor here maintaining the website and watching for breaking news while I was in New York with Patch editors from all up and down the East Coast. We talked about the future of Patch and about how we can better serve our readers. We ate, we drank and we shared stories about the rollercoaster we've all been on since each of our sites launched. But most importantly we talked about the future of journalism: engagement. I've always been a print purist. I love newspapers. I love the history of newspapers. And I love the reporters that have graced the pages with …

Takoma Park Patch launched just over a month ago. It feels like a lot longer than that, to be honest. When I started, I was worried I wouldn't be able to file three stories a day. But now I find myself overwhelmed by all the stories that live in Takoma Park. From the normal ones you'd see in any newspaper, like crime, government and education, to ones that are unique to the city. I'm still getting my footing when it comes to learning the important issues and getting educated on them, but I'm getting there. There is one issue that was apparent to me when I started, and is still at the …

On a late spring day in 2001 I walked south on Broad Street in Philadelphia. It was early evening, with darkness creeping up over the city. I ambled past the Academy of Music where the great Philadelphia Orchestra used to play, now home to the Pennsylvania Ballet. Then I crossed over Locust Street and came up on the behemoth Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, a modern glass structure that at the time had just started housing the orchestra. I remember thinking how bizarre and profane it would be to see Leopold Stokowski or Eugene Ormandy conduct a Stravinsky piece on a place like that.  I …

Let's say you've had a tough Friday at the office and you come home to relax in for the night. You flip through your record collection and drop the needle on "I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight." Naturally. Linda Thompson sings out to you, "I'm so tired of working everyday/Now the weekends come, I'm gonna throw my trouble away." Then you walk into your kitchen to open a bottle of wine. You start to panic. You don't have any wine. And you can't get any to bring home in Takoma Park. Hopefully that will change soon. Takoma Park City Council is set to vote Monday on legislation that would …

In a recent statement about the rise in burglaries in Takoma Park over the last month, Takoma Park Police Chief Ronald Ricucci quoted one of the burglars as saying, "…the word on the street is that Takoma Park is an easy hit with residences with so many valuables inside." This struck me as a bit odd. Census data show that the Washington Metro Region is one of the wealthiest areas in the country and Montgomery County is one of the wealthier areas within that region. Montgomery County is the second richest county in Maryland and tenth richest in the nation, based on median household income …

At a bar on Connecticut Avenue in Friendship Heights, a bartender asked me what there was to cover in Takoma Park. "Corruption at the local food co-op?" she said, laughing. The general perception of Takoma Park as a liberal, granola-chewing community is widespread and not entirely wrong. But there are two Takoma Parks. The first is the one everyone in the Washington metropolitan region knows. To many, it is the liberal city with a nuclear ban that allows immigrants to vote and at one point refused to do business with any corporation with ties to Burma. It was the home to some of the most well…