By Peter Huoppi - Jun. 28, 2010

Have you ever looked up at the tiny window in the church steeple 100 feet above the ground and thought, “how could I get up there?” Well, I have. This year, I had the chance to climb up into some of those steeples with Norwich City Historian Dale Plummer. Church bell towers are among the most prominent features in New England towns, but few people have ever been inside of them. There was a child-like thrill in creeping through the dusty passages behind these churches' unmarked doors, as if we were sneaking into somewhere that was forbidden. Slipping through a narrow door behind the organ and climbing up a creaky wooden ladder was like traveling back in time. Reading the manufacturer's engraving on the bell and the centuries-old graffiti carved into the walls only reinforced this feeling. It's moments like these, while not always especially newsworthy, that always stand out to me when looking back at a year's work. -Peter Huoppi

By Peter Huoppi and Rick Koster - July 11, 2010

The idea of the series is to take advantage of the vast stylistic array of songwriters and bands in this very fertile music scene and explore the individual creative processes and the always-different craft of composition — without any judgement on our part in term of genre or message. Jim Carpenter of the Hoolios is pretty generally regarded by our entire musical community as one of its finest songwriters — a guy with a national pedigree whose work is competitive in a global context. In the analysis and biography of his song “He Gave Her Roses,” Carpenter touches on a magnificent number of elements that went into the song: The cobwebbed segue between dreams, art and storytelling; the occasional and dark connection between religion and insanity; the blend of sudden and unbidden creative urges with hard work and the refinement of an idea; and the revelation that familial legacy is a reward for a lifetime's work — rather than riches and stardom. -Rick Koster

By Jenna Cho - Sept. 1, 2010

Some stories lend themselves better to visual storytelling, and this was one of them. The event was ordinary and momentous at the same time: the first day of kindergarten. I love telling stories like this, where I get to give readers and viewers a glimpse into someone else's life and share with them all those telling moments that make an otherwise generic notion of the first day of school more intimate and familiar. -Jenna Cho

By Peter Huoppi - Nov. 25, 2010

Many of the stories we cover each year are prominent public events, but my favorites are the ones that involve intensely private moments. Moments that seem routine, but add up to an interesting story. For our story about their adoptions, the members of the Long family welcomed me into their home during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and were extremely candid about the joys and the troubles they have experienced in expanding their family. But more than what they had to say, the moments that made this story for me were the subtle ones. The peace of two brothers relaxing on the couch, the funny faces between sisters over an Internet chat, and the smiles and laughs shared around the family dinner table. -Peter Huoppi

By Tim Cook - Mar. 10, 2010

On the night of March 10, 2010 I was in our video production room working on a new video that I had just shot in Norwich about the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's visit. This process was interrupted when we started to hear a fire call coming in at the Parkside West apartment complex in New London on our scanners in the newsroom. At the first call that there were residents trapped in the building, we sent our staff photographer Dana Jensen to cover the event. Upon listening to the first due fire companies arriving it became quickly apparent that this would be a huge story. I stopped editing, grabbed the video camera and drove to the scene. It was this quick thinking and decision making that allowed me to capture resident being rescued by the New London fire department and document the fire and its effect on the Parkside residents as the story unfolded. -Tim Cook

By Katie Warchut - Sept. 25, 2010

As soon as The Day got the GoPro HD Hero, a small wearable high-definition video camera that can go underwater, we knew it could give our videos a new dimension. At the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, where the sub school uses a water tower to practice escaping from submarines in relatively shallow depths, we strapped the camera to instructors going through the training. They agreed to hold the camera, wear it on a chest harness and then a head harness inside the inflatable suit worn during the escape, to give viewers a first-person perspective on what it might be like to escape from a submarine in an emergency. -Katie Warchut

By Peter Huoppi and Rick Koster - Oct. 29, 2010

Parking spots in downtown New London are at a premium, particularly during the tourist season when outta-towners swoop in a steal all of our spaces. Once fall arrived and the visitors were gone, though, there was a crushing development for those of us who park in the Water Street Garage: the facility was scheduled to undergo massive renovation and the vast majority of the parking spaces were blocked off. And yet … we could see little evidence of any ongoing progress. Instead, we all fought over a very limited number of spaces and stared bitterly at rows and rows of empty real estate with no work happening. Figuring that parking problems resonate with most folks who have jobs in an urban environment, we decided to satirize the situation. -Rick Koster