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Jeremy Weyl, one of the speakers at the Occupy G-8 People's Summit, addresses a few dozen people in the audience. (Michael Rosenwald - The Washington Post)

What I’ve seen so far of the protests surrounding the G-8 Summit at Camp David:

About three dozen people and one dog occupied a community room at the Frederick County Public Library early Friday morning for a daylong series of talks entitled the “People’s Summit.” Nearly a dozen reporters and photographers joined them, either staying or quickly leaving.

“People all over the planet are waking up and joining a global movement,” Margot Flowers, one of the organizers of the summit and the co-leader of the group It’s Our Economy, told the group. The world, she said, was waking up to the notion that “human needs are more important than corporate greed.”

I got to Frederick early this morning to park myself in town before the alleged G-8 protests begin. Picked up a copy of the Frederick News-Post: “County gears up for G-8 deluge,” a front page headline blared. Another: “Tension in the air as summit convenes.”

(Lisa Bolton)

Could be an interesting day. I didn’t pack my gas mask.

But buried down in the bottom righthand corner of the front page I found news of another protest, this one not exactly connected to the ire aimed at 1 percenters: “Brunswick seniors to stage Prom 2.0,” the headline said.

Kathryn Manion accepts the Sophie Kerr Prize. (Kelly Neal-Washington College)Let’s take a deep breath.

Let’s pause from the hullabaloo over social networking, the big Facebook IPO tomorrow, the big news (in some circles) that Aaron Sorkin (he of “The Social Network” fame) will write the definitive movie about Steve Jobs. Let’s pause from obsessive checking of our Facebook pages. Let’s pause from posting pictures. Let’s pause from tweeting. Let’s look up from our smartphones.

Let us celebrate something innocent and classic: a young writer coming into her own.

Her name is Kathryn Manion. She grew up in Clarksville, in Howard County. She is a senior at Washington College, and when she steps on stage this weekend to graduate she will also be handed a check for $58,274. Kathryn is this year’s winner of the Sophie Kerr Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the country, endowed with $500,000 by the prize’s namesake when she died in 1965.

Earlier this week in New York City, when Kathryn stepped on stage to accept the prize, the writer was almost lost for words. Watch for a minute to see what I mean:

How sweet is this young woman? How poised?

There isn’t a word I can use on this blog that accurately describes what sort of life form pulls a scam on grandmas and grandpas. I will leave it to your imagination.

But if I were forced to choose a word to describe how I felt about what happened to Betty Potts and her husband Buddy, whose combined ages are 163, it would be this one: Fury.

Betty and Buddy have lived in Walkersville, a small town in Frederick County, longer than I have been alive. The other day Betty was out, and the phone rang. Buddy answered. Buddy does not like talking on the phone. If you know Buddy, you know he tries to hang up as soon as possible. If he stays on for more than a couple minutes, it’s a world record.

On the line was their grandson Michael, a college student, calling from Mexico. He was in trouble. He had left campus for a funeral for a high school buddy in Mexico, and he got mixed up with someone involved in drugs. He was talking very excitedly, and loud, which wasn’t entirely normal for him. But Buddy didn’t think anything was too suspicious: Michael had used his own name, his old high school. It was Michael. He was scared.

Step 1: Determine need for goats. The key question to ask yourself is, “Do I have a vegetation problem on my property?” Hint: If you have weeds-gone-crazy, a cornucopia of poison ivy or runaway honeysuckle — among many other forms of vexing vegetation — you are probably gonna need a goat.

Step 2: Find a farm with an inventory of goats to rent. WTOP reports that Prosperity Acres Farm in Sunderland is one such operation. “As an alternative to using herbicides, property owners in Southern Maryland can hire the goats to chow down on unwanted vegetation,” the station says. The goats can work just about anywhere, including golf courses, as we reported last year.

Goats clean up vegetation at Mellomar Golf Park in Owings. (Darwin Weigel/The Calvert Recorder)

Step 3: Invite farm owner Mary Bowen for a visit. “No two jobs are the same, therefore a full evaluation of your project is necessary by our team,” her Web site says. “We will determine how many goats are necessary for the job and how long they will be on your property. Goats love eating unwanted vegetation — that is their natural food, and we enjoy being able to provide that to them!”

Step 4: Watch the goats party. “As long as they’ve got the weeds to eat, the goats are very content,” Bowen told WTOP. “It’s as if they’re at an all-you-can-eat buffet.” To keep the goats on task, the farm provides fences. “All you have to provide is the unwanted vegetation — we do the rest,” the farmers say.

Step 5: Salute the goats’ professional work. You can see pictures of their successes here or watch a video of them working here.

Step 6: Enjoy your clean property and its contributions to science. The University of Maryland Eastern Shore just began studying how goats and sheep can tidy up property, according to the station.

Step 7: Watch your step! Prosperity provides the following bonus with its goat vegetation tidy-up services: “Best of all, the goats leave an all-natural fertilizer free of charge behind for you.”