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The Real News With Natalie Ziegler

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Often something someone says inspires me, and I want to explore it further in an article. That’s what happened when I was talking last week to Natalie Ziegler, who was a researcher and segment producer at CNN from 1986 to 1994 and ran to represent Howard County’s District 9A in the Maryland General Assembly in 2018. “We’re not going to change the polarization and divisiveness in this country until we change where people get their news, Robert,” she said to me as she took off her gray wool coat and hung it on the back of a chair at Glory … Read more

A D’votional to Sustainability With Chiara D’Amore

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I was a few paragraphs into reporting on a few lovely hours I spent with the founder and president of the Community Ecology Institute, Chiara D’Amore, when it hit me–I was inside. You dolt, Colleen, I thought! I should have been writing this from the outdoors, a bench in a local park, perhaps. A bird would alight on my shoulder, and I’d smile at it. As I looked down at my computer screen, a rainbow would shoot across the sky behind me. I’d take a deep breath in, inhaling the a slightly spicy freesia scent, as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons played and…okay, … Read more

On Gun Violence Prevention In Central Maryland and Beyond

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While Colleen and I have pretty much all the same opinions on political issues, there are some that one or the other of us is more active in than the other. Gun violence prevention is sort of my thing. Soon after the wife and I came to Howard County, there were two shootings in Maryland, at Great Mills High School and the Capitol Gazzette. And while there’s something awful in its own way about violence in places that it’s less common, the long-term story of gun violence is how it harms communities of color and economic disadvantage on a daily … Read more

Marcus Harris, Howard County Sheriff

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One way that RoCo’s setting down roots in Howard County is that we’ve become members of a local community supported agriculture (CSA) coop. Our first pickup date was the same day I was set to meet Sheriff Marcus Harris at his office to talk about what’s new for the newly-elected Howard County Sheriff. The word “community” came up in my chat with Marcus a lot. Husband Dearest, a.k.a, Robert said he’d take Moses, our dachshund-boxer mix, for a walk around Lake Kittamaqundi. So he and I left the Sheraton downtown at the same time. I was on my way to … Read more

Deanna Peel On the Life of a Chief-of-Staff

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Very soon after Colleen and I dove headfirst into the local political scene, we figured something out that to more seasoned politicos might sound a touch obvious. The people to know–the ones who have all the answers–are the chiefs of staff to the politicians. They arrange the professional lives of their bosses, after all, and managing delicate relationships is so much of what politics involves. This is ever truer the more local you get. Sure, Senator Guy Guzzone (D-13) is pretty high-up at the state level, but it’s still true in his case. And it’s why I wanted to talk … Read more

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