
{"id":2124,"date":"2008-03-20T06:41:36","date_gmt":"2008-03-20T14:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/03\/20\/coming-home\/"},"modified":"2008-03-20T06:41:36","modified_gmt":"2008-03-20T14:41:36","slug":"coming-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/03\/20\/coming-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Robert Dickson\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When Mary Beth, Kirk and I walked into last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Community Dinner, I felt a bit like a deer in the headlights. There were so many people I wanted to meet and talk with but in that big crowd I really didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know where to start.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhat audaciously, I had added the line \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Carrboro Citizen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to my nametag. We were a couple of weeks away from getting the first issue on the street, so in addition to a few curious looks one lady even made the comment that I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the only one. No kidding.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Since that dinner, I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t had to explain nearly so often that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not the Carrboro citizen. Putting 5,000 copies a week on the street for 52 weeks seems to have helped.<\/p>\n<p>From Hillsborough to Pittsboro to White Cross to the big city of Chapel Hill, folks have welcomed our interest in their lives. There are so many great stories to tell from our town and our region and they just keep on coming. Carrboro is home, though, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to here we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll always return.<\/p>\n<p>Many friends have come into my life from every possible angle. Coworkers, advertisers, subscribers, writers and readers have all enriched my life in the ways I had hoped when we conceived of The Citizen.<\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been my experience for the last year. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve met and talked with lots of you now and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all made me feel like I belong here, and that just maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m helping provide something worthwhile for our town.<\/p>\n<p>So when I returned for this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dinner, it felt like I had come full circle. I went with my wife and daughter, and the first person to greet us was a smiling Jackie Helvey. Thanks for the ads, she said. No, Jackie, thank you for doing so much for this community and for making my family and me feel welcome.<\/p>\n<p>Jackie was just the start. I greeted a good number of folks whom I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten to know, as well as finally putting faces with names of others with whom I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had the pleasure of communicating. And when I got my hug from Nerys Levy, well, that just about did it.<\/p>\n<p>In some ways, the past 52 weeks seem like an eternity compressed into a millisecond. And when I pause to have that conversation at the gym, market or bar that I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have had a year ago, it strikes me what a gift I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been given. By publishing this weekly newspaper, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve transformed my relationship with my town from passive to active, from observer to participant. And in the process, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received the richness, warmth and friendship of our community.<\/p>\n<p>So thanks, Carrboro. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m home now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Robert Dickson\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 When Mary Beth, Kirk and I walked into last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Community Dinner, I felt a bit like a deer in the headlights. There were so many people I wanted to meet and talk with but in that big crowd I really didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know where to start. Somewhat audaciously, I had added the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}