Vol. 1, No. 1

November/December 1998

.

What “The Cambridge Candle” means to me

By Lloyd U. Smith

This production is an experience in learning and teaching. It is an opportunity to learn to listen with patience to another view, another attitude, and learn something more from it.

It is an opportunity to teach by example, address another one’s difference of experience in a way that would satisfy my need to be acknowledged. Currently and so far in our living experience, communication has happened mostly by way of venting our pain and frustration on each other. All that this does is to increase pain and frustration and decrease the chance for understanding and cooperation. However, when any other approach is employed, there comes a “whole-worldly” dilution of truth and honesty. Therein lies our challenge-- to speak with commitment and fervor and yet not to alienate and condemn -- to inform and enlighten, but to engage as well.

My work on this newspaper will bring us together working on location to build a better community -- not just reporting the news, but creating what’s good to hear about at the same time by community work and involvement. A newsgroup that not only reports for the community but works with it at the same time.

True to life?

There is a quality of experience that makes communication guaranteed to be successful no matter in what setting and no matter in what context. That quality is one that makes reality familiar to us no matter what our differences of background or environment may be. A musical score, a movie production, a novel or a social movement can trigger universal attraction and interest based on how “true to life” such developments appear to be. So too in a newspaper productions -- so too in this newspaper production. What is sought here is to have the success of this publication be based on how much of your experience is reflected in these pages that you read.

How will this be accomplished? It will be accomplished by having this newspaper be produced by seeking to have each issue be the result of having sought you out for your input. This will be accomplished by going out into your neighborhood and working with you on issues that affect your community or affect you and your home personally. This newspaper will not only report your experience but will inform and advise you as well. It will provide guidance and direction, “how-to” information on issues and matters that matter, in the most mundane to the most important ways: What you need to know about getting the right services in areas of human need and experience like housing, education, health and finance; What you need to know about what’s going on in entertainment, literature, the world of society and popular trends.

Finally, recently there have been dramatic and significant developments in the world around us: internationally, with a growing world economic downslide, and nationally with a growing gap between the interests and welfare of the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Locally, with the promotion and support of high finance over the needs of the less fortunate, and personally with the increase in stress, crime, domestic violence. All of this calls for the kind of light that only a paper of this kind can shed. So let this candle shine and light away the growing darkness! In spite of the alarming difficulties we face, and the need for an alert to be given, there should be an effort at the same time to seek and to inspire, and to entertain and uplift -- to leave us with reason to hope, to believe and to work together for increasing understanding, security and human fellowship amongst all of us, no matter where we come from or find ourselves!

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