I hope that you will enjoy this issue of Carroll Magazine as much as we enjoyed its creation. We always strive to offer escapes, advice, resources, inspiration, even silliness to reward readers who take time to turn the pages.
With each issue, you’ll find familiar features like Taste and Faces and Places, as well as news and feature stories about cool people and happenings in the county. You’ll also see new features designed to entertain you and to inspire more mindful living.
Baby You Can Start My Car by Linda Esterson is the first of a continuing series about courtship and engagement. Enjoy the vicarious thrill of how others fell in love and popped “the” question. Perhaps let us share your story too.
In Our Backyard, by James Rada launches an ongoing feature about new and renewed businesses in the county.
We talked Kym Byrnes, the magazine’s associate editor, into writing a column about her triumph over colon cancer. It offers just enough advice and irreverence to open conversations about a topic that too many people avoid. February and March are the months that reveal how many resolutions really resonated, or merely became bricks on our individual roads of good intention.
Let Carroll Magazine inspire you to continue to work toward your goals or, if necessary, reset them so they are more accessible.
Three teenagers and their families inspired me to turn off my cell phone more often and tune into myself. In the middle of milestones like college tours, college acceptances, class ring arrival, final exams, play auditions and the holiday season (with all its natural inconveniences and stresses), the teens stepped forward for story idea that had the potential to turn their lives upside down.
They said no to social media and conveniences linked to their cell phones for two weeks. They kept journals about their experiences and took time for interviews and photographs. Their parents and siblings absorbed inconveniences inherent to turning off what has become a mobile lifeline for many.
Belle Nelson, Delaney Debinski and Emily Bartholet’s experiences are a wake up call to the importance of the quality of experiences rather than their quantity. Their story affirms that reasonable use of social media and mindful connections every day might bridge a distance between us that, for some, is so vast that eye contact and spontaneous conversations seem intimate rather than a norm.
Oh, that more of us could curb our use of social media and reflect on the effects the way Belle, Delaney and Emily did.
Enjoy this issue of Carroll Magazine and our redesigned online issue (www.carrollmagazine.com). Let us know what you enjoyed or what left you annoyed. Let us know what, or who, you would like to read about in future issues by emailing your ideas to: readerswrite@carrollmagazine.com
We value that connection.
Amazing Peace, Lisa Breslin.
