Wallyhood: Another New Beginning

You may have seen a few posts trickling out here at Wallyhood like flowers popping up in the Spring. Yes, after a long 2020 and a long winter, we are trying to emerge from our hibernation. A reopening is afoot!

As with so many organizations, COVID-19 dealt a blow to us, as stay-at-home orders and closed schools placed new burdens on many of us. I tried to keep the lights on throughout 2020, but it was never my wish to run this blog by myself. I thought I was saying goodbye in this post, and Jordan followed up with his own thoughts.

But it looks as if my goodbye may have been an aloha. Over the past few months, we have been rounding up some additional volunteers to help out with the writing. And we have added five new editors: Alan, Megan, Julie, Susan and Gary. If you write for us, or interact with us via [email protected], you will eventually hear from each of them. And Katy is still an active editor.

A word to our writers both new and old … Katy has been “making the rounds” (via emails to you all individually) reassessing your areas of interest. You may hear from the editors about a story that matches your interests, but there’s no need to wait for us to call. We welcome your story ideas! Drop us a line at [email protected] and let us know what’s on your mind. Not on our writers email list? We welcome articles from anyone in the neighborhood with something to say. Let us know what you plan to write, and if you would like to be added to the writers list.

And a note to our readers … We are trying out a new “team editing” concept. Rather than have one person perform all the tasks needed to run wallyhood for a week, and then rotating, we are dividing up the tasks among the editors. We have defined a set of three roles:

• Editor-in-Chief: Edits completed articles and schedules them for publication
• Assignment editors: Solicit stories from writers and follow up until completion
• Moderation/Email editor: Responds to email sent to [email protected] as needed. Moderates comments and forums

Our editorial staff will rotate through these positions over time.

About the forums … Last year we struggled with spam on the forums, and so they have been taken down. While we don’t feel these are “core” to wallyhood, readers did use them quite a bit, and, heck, I liked them. We’ll try to restore them at some point in the future.

Wish us luck as we navigate our way through these new waters. We may get off to a slow start, so have some patience. Welcome back to wallyhood, and … ALOHA!