In Defense of Handwritten Notes

I can remember clearly the chore lists from my youth. Put clothes away, wipe down the sink, clean the rabbit’s cage, write thank you notes. I’d much rather play with my friends than do any of those things, but I knew in order to do so, I’d have to check the boxes. With dread and mild resentment, I dutifully carried out each chore, saving the thank you notes for last.

What at first felt like work, slowly started to feel like fun. A budding writer even then, I found I enjoyed the opportunity to tell the story of how a gift was being used or what time spent with me meant. I started to seek out the chance to show gratitude on my own, and found it no longer ranked on my chore list (replaced, unfortunately, by scrubbing the toilets). Making sure the efforts of others were seen and appreciated unlocked something warm and fuzzy in me. I liked the way writing these notes made me feel, too.

As I got older, the practice became more of a personal ritual, and grew beyond just thank yous—selecting a card that felt true to the recipient, setting side time to reflect on the right message, and capturing that emotion to send by snail mail to their home. Shopping for just the right card, comparing paper options and copy choices, finding just the right graphic. It was all a magical hunt. I wanted to be sure that genuine gratitude and love shone through not just in what I wrote, but in my choice of vessel, too.

These days some of the luxury has slipped away from my note writing practice. With a toddler in tow, the heavy-stock, letterpress beauties of yore are gone, replaced instead with a generic box of blank cards picked up on a Target run. I find I have to be more intentional about making time to write, but the emotion is all the same. In fact, it’s perhaps amplified now that it’s stripped down.

I know I’ll teach my son the importance of gratitude, and hope he’ll be as fond of notes and letters as I’ve grown to be. It’s a generational thread, this practice of writing down our appreciation. It connects us to a moment in time, a person who touched our lives at that instance.

Just as clearly as I can recall that chore list, I remember going through my grandmother’s keepsakes when she passed. Boxed up with other cherished items were so many of the thank you notes and just-because cards I’d sent her. While I didn’t need validation, it meant the world to know my words and appreciation meant so much to her.

I keep all of the cards I’ve received as well, the thank yous and the thinking of yous and everything in between. Flipping back through them like photographs, I’m transported to happy moments and hard times, knowing I had support through it all. The words of friends and family, penned in their looping cursive or dashed off in hurried-looking script, are some of the greatest treasures of my life.

80 Stories: Site Safety

The entrepreneurial spirit of the American Dream launched this company. The founders of HITT Contracting, Warren and Myrtle Hitt, built a humble business that grew to become one of the top general contractors in the nation today. In all these years, that spirit has never faded. You can see it in the pride they have for this country and their desire to continue expanding from coast to coast. It’s alive in the generations of leaders that followed the founders and in our team members nationwide.

Safety impacts the contracting world in every imaginable way. It defines the way we run our jobsites, outfit our team members, and perform our work. Our approach ensures we make the right calls in tough situations, and do our best to prevent them as well.

A main focus of our Safety Department is to provide training and education for all team members. “We take every action possible to limit the potential for accidents on our jobsites,” explained Mike McCaffrey, Vice President of Safety. “We make sure every one of our team members is empowered on HITT jobsites. After proper training, each team member has the responsibility to stop incidents before they occur.”

“We continually reinforce the basics on site,” added Safety Superintendent Jimmy Jackson. “With each phase of a project we complete, we evaluate where we are and what we need to do to ensure safety every step of the way.”

As our safety program keeps pace with the company’s growth, we continue to match and exceed OSHA expectations. With a focus on minimizing risks for everyone who comes into contact with our work, we’ve made it a priority to go above and beyond the Federal requirements. As a direct result, we’ve seen our Experience Modification Rate—a common indication of safety for general contractors—drop consistently over the years. Our EMR currently sits at commendable .48; the national average is 1.0.  

“The industry is starting to recognize that safety goes far beyond the realm of simple compliance,” said Mike. “I’m proud to say that HITT is at the forefront of that movement, and my goal is to continue to develop a culture of safety here that ensures we remain there.” 

Site Operations Vice President Chris Michael summed things up this way: “At the end of the day, each of us wants our teams to realize that it doesn’t matter how small a risk is, it’s always too risky when it comes to your life.” 

Just What Sort of Emergency Should You Be Saving For?

It’s National Preparedness Month, the time each year when we’re reminded that you can’t predict emergencies like natural disasters, and that now is always a good time to start saving (just in case your rainy day ends up being a monsoon).

This hit especially close to home (pun intended) when Hurricane Isiais made its presence known by knocking a large tree limb down on top of my car. While I certainly hadn’t planned for my vehicle to be a casualty of the storm, I had savings set aside that cushioned the blow when it came to repairs.

Truthfully, I learned to set aside funds for an emergency the hard way (as many do): after incurring plenty of unforeseen expenses of my own. Take it from someone who knows: without an emergency savings fund, it’s very possible to take on unnecessary debt.  

Navy Federal provides great advice on the basics of an emergency fund and how to set one up, but what exactly should you be saving for? It’s often hard to conceptualize what an unexpected expense might look like. To help, I polled friends, family and colleagues to see what surprise costs they’d tackled this year.

General Expenses

This year brought with it a lot of changes in expenses as none of us saw COVID coming. Friends and family saw grocery, electricity, water and even internet bills rise as a result of staying (and working…and learning…) at home.

Income Shifts

On that same note, some I talked to dealt with loss of income as a result of being laid off or furloughed due to COVID. For one friend, the change was more choice than circumstance, as she left her job to care for her kids. Either way you split it, though, no one I spoke with was planning to go from two incomes to one, and those who dropped from one to none faced an even tougher challenge.

Medical Expenses

This was another big one. It’s not fun to think about or plan for medical emergencies but you’ll likely feel better prepared to tackle them if you have money set aside. Those I spoke with dealt with added costs that included an emergency appendectomy, at least two root canals, a cancer diagnosis and fertility treatments. Even with insurance, the cost for out-of-network providers and additional diagnostics (think labs or imaging) proved to be a surprise for many.

Vet Bills

It’s not just people who required unexpected care, though. Unanticipated costs for veterinary care were another reason folks had to dip into their emergency savings. Whether it was $2,500 to remove a sock from the tummy of a very curious spaniel or $500 to cover allergy shots for a beloved mutt, pet costs were another area of unexpected expense for more than a few of the people I talked to.

Home Improvements

It’s never a good time for your air conditioning quit, your roof to leak or your water heater to go—lessons many friends and family learned the hard way this year. Just ask my sister, who had to dig for coins from between her couch cushions to help cover the $750 she needed for a new AC unit when hers went bust during a mid-July heatwave.

Home offices were another area of unanticipated expense as nearly everyone I talked to was now working from the (dis)comfort of their kitchen, living room or other improvised space. As a result, desks, lamps, chairs and other home office equipment became unexpected essentials.

Electronics

Similarly, new computers and other gadgets weren’t in the original budget for many I spoke with. For families with children, the need to provide or upgrade their child’s electronics to keep pace with distance learning came as a surprise. It wasn’t just computers though, others had to cover a new cell phone after dropping the old one in the toilet and a home security system after a porch theft.

Vehicle Care

It seems I wasn’t the only person in my circle who faced unanticipated car costs this year. And while I was lucky enough to only have to cover my insurance deductible, it was still $250 I had to pull from my emergency savings. Others fared far worse, though, having to replace their brakes, their tires and even their entire car.

This all goes to say that there are many costs in life we can’t anticipate. And whether it’s a tree limb across your car, a sock in your dog’s stomach, an AC unit on the fritz or a global pandemic to contend with, you’ll need some way to cover the expense. Expect the unexpected and make sure you’re in control when things are not.

See how you can start building your emergency savings with guidance from Navy Federal.  If you have unexpected costs you need help covering now, they can help with a personal loan to ease the burden as well.

At Your Service

When we say our members are the mission, we mean it. In the 28 years I’ve been part of the credit union, I’ve seen a lot of growth and change. Even as we hit the 10 million member mark, we haven’t lost sight of the fact that our purpose here is to be “of service” to our members.

That’s been the spirit of the work we do since the beginning. We serve with empathy. It’s important to recognize that compassion and empathy aren’t the same thing. Compassion is sympathetic concern, while empathy is about the ability to understand and share another’s feelings. The difference between the two is epic.

If a member experiences fraud and calls us, even if it’s the hundredth time we receive a call like that that day, we don’t dismiss the experience. It’s not enough to say “Oh don’t worry, that happens all the time.” We don’t want to diminish the issue, it’s important to stop and recognize the significance to the member and instead say “I’m sorry this is happening to you, can you tell me the last time you used your card?”

As senior vice president of our contact centers, I see that kind of connection in the interactions our reps have with members every day. When members call in, they need someone to listen. To consider their situation thoughtfully, address it with respect and work with them to find solutions. They want to be heard and understood. That perspective has been really important as we assisted members through the uncertainty of the past year.

It’s not been an easy time for a lot of people. We recognize reaching out to us may be the only time a member can confide what they’re experiencing or feeling. The value we can offer goes beyond the relief loans and assistance to being a sounding board in those moments.

For us, it’s about empowering members and connecting them with the tools they need to keep going. A big piece of that is our Personal Financial Counseling[AC1]  service, which can help members with anything from goal setting to financial recovery. Beyond that, it’s directing them to our Security Center[AC2] , our MakingCents podcast [AC3] or other resources. We want to make sure the support and guidance doesn’t end when the phone call does.

Our employees are up to the task, too. A big reason is because they’re part of the communities we serve. Many are former military themselves, and even live where our members do. They understand the unique challenges our members face because many have similar experiences. Some have been there themselves. 

Being a not-for-profit organization, the actions we take aren’t dictated by profit margins. They’re made with people in mind. The decisions made at Navy Federal are made with our members’ best interest in mind. Surplus funds come back to members through dividends, reduced loan rates and product and service improvements. Their needs are at the forefront of our growth, and they always will be.

As a member-owned organization, we’re honored each time someone choses to bank with us. By joining Navy Federal, our members become owners in their own pursuit of financial security.  We’re grateful for all of you.

More Than a Drop in the Bucket: Navigating Water, Trust, and Public Pressure

Fill the coffee pot. Start the dishwasher. Water the plants.

Infrastructure feels invisible right up until people are asked to trust someone else with it.

Suddenly, an ordinary to-do list becomes something much larger. Questions about water pressure turn into questions about public pressure. A utility bill becomes a conversation about trust, transparency, and who gets to shape the future of a community.

During my time supporting communications for the City of Falls Church, I helped navigate one of the most publicly debated issues facing the city at the time: the proposed sale of the municipal water system to Fairfax Water.

On paper, it was a policy and infrastructure story involving utility governance, rate structures, service agreements, litigation, and long-term financial planning. In reality, it was about something far more personal. Residents were debating trust, identity, transparency, and the future of their community.

Falls Church occupied a unique position in Northern Virginia’s infrastructure landscape. Although geographically small, the city’s water system served a much larger customer base across eastern Fairfax County for decades, including rapidly growing commercial corridors like Tysons Corner and Merrifield. As tensions escalated between Falls Church and Fairfax County over governance, rates, and long-term control of the system, the issue evolved from a technical policy discussion into a highly visible regional conflict.

And unlike many public policy debates, this one touched people’s daily lives directly. Residents wanted answers about costs, reliability, accountability, and whether the city was protecting a public asset or giving one away. City Council meetings grew increasingly emotional. Media scrutiny intensified. Community frustration became impossible to ignore.

My role sat in the middle of all of it. At the time, I was not only supporting the city’s communications efforts, but also living in the community myself. I attended the meetings as both a communications professional and a resident directly affected by the outcome. The decisions being debated would shape the city I lived in, the infrastructure I relied on every day, and the future residents were being asked to trust.

I attended City Council meetings, helped shape messaging and talking points, managed public-facing communications, supported social media updates, and coordinated town halls and community engagement efforts designed to help residents understand an issue that was financially and politically complicated. Much of the work involved translating dense operational and legal information into language people could actually follow while navigating an environment where trust was often fragile and emotions were high.

What stayed with me most from that experience was realizing how differently organizations and communities often define transparency.

From an institutional perspective, transparency can mean releasing documents, presenting data, or holding public meetings. From a community perspective, transparency feels different. People want acknowledgement before explanation. They want honesty about tradeoffs. They want to feel included in decisions shaping their neighborhoods, taxes, and quality of life.

That experience fundamentally shaped how I think about communications strategy. The work is rarely just about distributing information. It is about creating clarity in moments where people feel uncertainty, skepticism, or loss of control. It is about recognizing that public engagement cannot become reactive theater after decisions are already emotionally charged. And it is about understanding that infrastructure conversations are ultimately human conversations, even when wrapped in technical language and policy detail.

Falls Church voters ultimately approved the sale of the water system to Fairfax Water, resolving years of litigation and regional conflict while reshaping the city’s financial future.

What looked from the outside like a utility transaction quickly became something much more human and much more emotionally charged. It remains one of the clearest examples I’ve seen of how infrastructure, public trust, policy, and community identity all intersect at once.

From Horse Farms to Hyperscale: The Changing Landscape of Data Center Growth

The modern economy runs on infrastructure most people will never see, unless they happen to drive down Route 28 in Loudoun County, Virginia, that is. What was once horse farms and suburban neighborhoods is now home to perhaps the highest concentration of data centers in the United States. Massive gray buildings now power everything from cloud computing and streaming services to banking transactions and artificial intelligence.

I’ve seen this transformation unfold in two ways. The first, as a passenger in my parents’ minivan, ferrying my dad to Dulles Airport and back for business trips. Back then, much of the corridor was still open land, interrupted mostly by storage units, scattered houses, and long stretches of undeveloped space. Watching that landscape transform into the digital backbone of the modern economy has been both remarkable and, at times, disorienting.

Years later, I came to understand the forces behind that transformation firsthand. During my time supporting HITT Contracting’s early expansion into data center construction, I toured facilities, worked closely with operational teams, and helped communicate the scale, complexity, and urgency driving the industry’s growth. Even then, it was clear these projects operated differently from traditional commercial development. Their impact reached far beyond the walls of the facilities themselves.

So how did that happen? The short answer is proximity to internet backbone infrastructure, available land, aggressive tax incentives, and an insatiable demand for digital connectivity. What that growth means for surrounding communities, however, is far more complicated.

For years, data centers were viewed primarily as an economic win. They brought construction jobs, commercial tax revenue, and long-term investment into rapidly growing regions. In Loudoun County especially, data center tax revenue has helped fund schools, parks, libraries, and public services without creating the same level of strain associated with large residential developments.

But as these facilities multiplied, appearing beside youth sports complexes, grocery stores, healthcare campuses, and suburban neighborhoods, the public conversation shifted.

Residents began asking different questions.Questions about land use. Energy demand. Water consumption. Noise. Aesthetics. Grid capacity. Community identity. And perhaps most importantly, who truly benefits from this scale of growth over the long term?

Unlike traditional commercial spaces, data centers often operate quietly and invisibly once construction is complete. They do not generate the same public interaction as retail centers, restaurants, or mixed-use developments. Their value is foundational rather than experiential. They are essential to the digital economy, but that value can feel abstract to the communities living beside them.

At the same time, demand for digital infrastructure continues to accelerate. Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, advanced manufacturing, streaming platforms, and connected technologies are rapidly increasing the need for data storage, processing power, and grid capacity. These facilities are becoming foundational infrastructure for modern life.

That reality requires a more mature conversation about growth, infrastructure, and long-term responsibility. The challenge is no longer whether digital infrastructure should exist. It already underpins nearly every aspect of daily life. The challenge is whether communities, policymakers, utilities, developers, and industry leaders can evolve quickly enough to build that infrastructure responsibly.

That means asking harder questions earlier in the process. How do we balance economic growth with long-term energy and water demands? How do we modernize grid infrastructure quickly enough to support rising consumption? How do we ensure communities feel included in conversations shaping their landscapes? How do we build infrastructure that is operationally resilient while remaining socially sustainable?

The future of data center development will depend on organizations capable of balancing urgency with stewardship. The industry will need leaders willing to move quickly while still thinking long-term about environmental impact, infrastructure resilience, and community trust.

It’s clear that while the digital economy is not slowing down, neither are the questions surrounding how we power it.