My name is Anna Alford and I’m the new editor of The Williamsport Guardian. I’ve spent the last several weeks bringing this issue to life with the help of a small, but hardy, band of other volunteers.

During those weeks I’ve often asked myself the question: Why am I doing this?

Here are some of my reasons: I grew up here, and though I’ve lived many other places from Boston to California, I keep coming back to the place I call home. I love the wilderness here. I grew up listening to the spring peepers and the whippoorwills, and I want to grow old listening to them. I want to see our natural places preserved. In this issue of The Guardian we begin a series of articles about the impact of natural gas drilling. For many local landowners, signing a gas lease has been a real financial boon in these tough financial times. But what lies ahead? Will natural gas drilling change our landscape and our way of life? In this and future issues we ask questions and begin to look for answers.

In a previous life I was a lawyer and a law clerk to Judge Brown, whose retirement is opening up a new judicial seat in the Lycoming County Court of Common Pleas. These days I consider myself a recovered lawyer and aside from a recent stint of jury duty I’ve steered clear of court rooms, but working on this issue has brought those days spent in the court house rushing back. In the upcoming election we will be voting for judges at every level of our state court system. Those decisions are important and are worth taking the time to educate ourselves on the candidates.

“There’s no culture in this area,” a newcomer to this area commented to me recently. But the fact is our local culture is as rich as it is varied. You just need to know where to look. The Guardian strives to spotlight culture in this area in its many forms. In this issue we highlight The Billtown Blues Festival and the Juneteenth Celebration. Jonah Walters reviews a jazz concert by Kenny Barron and Stefon Harris, given as part of Bucknell University’s “Janet Weis Cabaret Jazz Series.” Our calendar of events lists a wide range of events, from a jazz concert by the Sascha Feinstein Quartet to the Eastern Delaware Nations PowWow.

I really like movies, and I have to admit that one of the things I missed most when I moved back here was access to a wide range of films. I’m a volunteer at the Community Arts Center and appreciate it when they bring us films that the multiplex movie theaters don’t. I am looking forward to seeing “Sunshine Cleaning,” reviewed in this issue by Amy Hirsch. Perhaps if enough of us ask for it it will come to CAC or even to Cinema Center. I love the idea of The Billtown Film Festival and hope that others will join me in supporting the realization of this vision.

It can be lonely being a liberal living in a small township in rural Lycoming County. During the 2008 presidential campaign I met a lot of folks who felt like they were the only liberals in the area. The campaign brought many of us together. My work on The Guardian has brought me in touch with many interesting people and I look forward to introducing you to many of them through its pages.

I never met Ellen Tinsman in person, but I feel as if I’ve gotten to know her as I’ve edited our tribute to her. In the issues to come we’ll be introducing you to many other folks who each in their unique way enrich the fabric of our community.

I love food. I love to cook, I love to eat and I love to shop for food: what better place to go food shopping than a farmers’ market where you know you are getting fresh local food. In our next issue we’ll have a special restaurant section that spotlights locally-owned restaurants. We’d love to hear from you about your favorite restaurant.

As I’ve talked to people about what the Guardian has been and what it could become: I’ve heard that we should cover more local cultural events, that we should do more investigative reporting, that we should cover local politics, that we should cover a broader geographical region. I think that The Guardian should do all of those things and more. What we actually do is up to readers like you who make a commitment to help make it happen. We need volunteers to write articles, take photos, do graphic design and page layout, sell ads, and distribute papers. If you have an idea for the Guardian I’d love to hear from you, and I’ll love it even more if your idea comes with a commitment to take action to make it happen.