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Hallmark hasn’t quite gotten around to designing the corresponding greeting card, but that hasn’t stopped perennial Richmond überbooster Rick Tatnall from declaring 2009 the Year of Richmond.
If it sounds like a gimmick, that’s because it is. Tatnall, best known as executive director of Citizens Against Crime, has managed to track down more than 80 places named Richmond around the world in hopes of fostering some sort of ongoing network of cooperation among as many of these cities as he can.
It might be a tall order considering that our Richmond has yet to figure out how to cement regional cooperation with its neighbors.
So why not try it globally? The new Web site of Tatnall’s organization, twsrichmond.org, asks Richmonders — that is, Richmond, Va., residents — to donate time and $20 a year to the cause. He wants to solicit a million dollars and a million volunteer hours annually to “help build a Proud, Unified Richmond Regional Community.”
Tatnall describes Together We Stand as an umbrella organization in which various “ideas, programs and collaborations” can be nurtured.
The Year of Richmond — minus the first two months of that year — kicks off this month with a photo contest Tatnall has arranged in conjunction with the Orleans House Gallery, a community art gallery in Richmond upon Thames, England. | 
