“We liked Riderwood a lot, but we were not ready to move in 2003,” says Bill Muldoon who moved there with his wife Marion three years later from Smith Mountain Lake, Va. “When we found out about the priority list we thought it was a win-win decision. We had nothing to lose.”

The almost 200 participants of Riderwood’s annual fishing tournament may have been reeling in small fish, but the event raised more than $1,200 for the Meals-on-Wheels in College Park and Colesville, Md.

In the midst of an election year when it is next to impossible to turn on the television, open the paper, or search the Web without encountering “breaking news” from the political arena, it’s easy to ponder the question, “How did the news become such a defining factor in our lives?”