Something is under construction. Have you noticed?

No, something other than Liberty Road.

Portions of The Democrat office now resemble a day care center, complete with the little wooden alphabet blocks.

The observant of you have seen some of our latest props appear in the newspaper in one form or another.

And everyone will see a little more Thursday, but no one will understand the full package until February.

It&8217;s all part of The Democrat&8217;s annual Profile edition &8212; a product unlike anything else we do all year.

The magazine-style publication takes months of work. The staff of The Democrat started talking about Profile in September. We had a plan by October. And we are fully into the project now.

Some of you have been approached to buy advertisements; others have been called as sources for stories.

This project is the newspaper&8217;s biggest of the year, and, in turn, our favorite.

It&8217;s our chance to stretch our limits, try our hand at something different and have a little fun.

This year, it&8217;s back to the basics &8212; the building blocks.

We&8217;ve taken our theme &8212; Building Blocks: The ABCs of the Miss-Lou &8212; literally and invested in a large box of wooden alphabet blocks.

After we played a few games, including a block scavenger hunt around downtown Natchez, we got to work.

Each letter of the alphabet became our inspiration for the stories you&8217;ll see in Profile this year. We opened a dictionary, a local phonebook and our minds. A few hours later we felt confident that from altruism to zydeco we can show you just what makes the Miss-Lou tick.

But our thinking is bigger than the towers of blocks we built for fun.

Everything around us is made of small pieces, of building blocks.

The Miss-Lou is covered with actual construction &8212; new businesses, condos, hotels, homes. But that&8217;s the obvious stuff.

The real blocks are the people, the builders.

When you stack the thinkers, the doers, the artists, the historians and the regular folks together you get what we have &8212; community.

And that&8217;s what The Democrat wants to show you.

B for bubba, C for closets, T for timber and X for Xanadu &8212; the Miss-Lou is the foundation of Profile and you are the blocks.

In our Thanksgiving Day paper you&8217;ll find a four-page insert that introduces a little more of Profile 2007. You can see pictures of some of the folks who&8217;ll be working on the section this year, and you can find out how to be a part of the project yourself.

We&8217;ll keep you posted on work as we go, and be sure to watch for advertisements in the daily newspaper to see just how far along &8220;construction&8221; is.

Fortunately, our construction isn&8217;t subject to weather or material delays like Liberty Road. And our work won&8217;t derail your regularly scheduled newspaper.

Profile 2007 will be on your driveways and in newspaper racks on Sunday, Feb. 25.

But until then, I&8217;ve got building blocks to play with.

Julie Finley

is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or

julie.finley@natchezdemocrat.com

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