Life On the KP

The Key Peninsula is an interesting place to live. There is a history of eccentricity here - dating back to the turn of the last century and the anarchist town of Home...which is where we make our home! (No, officer, I do live at Home...really, sir, I'm not being smart mouthed...) So, being eccentric ourselves, we fit right in.

Or sort of. The problem out here is there isn't a real town-y kind of town...just some businesses along the highway. This makes meeting people a matter of joining groups or being so outgoing that you get to know everyone along the way. I am typically not much of a joiner, and while I consider myself social I am certainly not very good at making real friends from casual encounters. So of course we feel somewhat isolated here, with casual friends but few good ones.

Adding to the above is the fact that Paul and I prefer spending time with each other over pretty much any other pursuit (which is as it should be for a married couple, in my opinion) but that also makes me reluctant to "squander" time that we could spend together.

But one thing we have both done out here that has given us a lot of pleasure is to volunteer with the Key Peninsula News. The paper is an excellent monthly paper, written by an almost all volunteer staff. The writing, production, delivery, editing, and website are all handled by Key Peninsula residents. The paper's editor is Rodika Tollefson, an amazing writer, manager, motivator, and mentor for the group at large. The volunteers are a varied bunch - with amazing resumes and life stories that make for animated meetings and interesting articles and photos.

Paul handled website content management for the paper for a couple of years; when he got a bit tired of it I took over. I feel proud that for such a small paper there is such strong support for the website and an understanding of how it can augment the print edition.

If you have the time you should take a look at the paper here. The writing is really good, the people are real, and the community is a very nice one once you get to know it.