One thing about community journalism, sometimes you can manage to almost be at two places at the same time.

Almost.

That was the case for this writer last week, when the regularly scheduled meeting of the Goochland School Board and an organizational meeting for a possible Goochland chapter of the Richmond Tea Party were both scheduled for 7 p.m. June 8.

It was a toss-up as to which meeting to give priority. Goochland Editor Amy Condra was out of town on a well-deserved vacation so I was on my own.

School Board – Well, we know what’s going to happen there pretty much – there’s an online agenda and we’ve been there a bunch of times.

Tea Party – Who knows? I didn’t have a clue as to how many folks might show up at the meeting—it could be 10, or 200. Turns out it was closer to 200 (see story page 4).

Held at the Goochland Library, the Tea Party meeting was almost within shouting distance of the School Board meeting at the high school.

Long story short, by hotfooting it back and forth and making a little judicious after-the-fact phone calling, we managed to get a story on both events.

And they are both stories worth paying attention to.

As we commented last week, the recent discovery of the problems in county government has sparked a heightened level of citizen interest and participation in county government.

Similarly, on a national level, the recent recession and concern over higher debt levels caused by federal government intervention in the private sector (we’ll find out later whether that intervention was wise or not) have caused many folks to sit up and take notice.

That’s the thing about many of the people who showed up at the Tea Party meeting at the library. Some said they’d never come to a political meeting before in their lives; at least one said they didn’t normally vote.

Third party efforts have been unsuccessful in recent history, and the Tea Party has been dismissed as an effort that may have fleeting success but will then fade away. Is it a real grass-roots movement, or is it, as some have claimed, “Astroturf?”

We’ll see – but this writer is betting the movement may stick around longer than some prognosticators predict.