Motivational Thinking

In the spirit of being positive about the world, my work, my place in it, and the need to feel useful to others.....

I will promote myself.I will promote myself. I will promote myself. I will promote myself.
I will promote myself.I will promote myself. I will promote myself. I will promote myself.
I will promote myself.I will promote myself. I will promote myself. I will promote myself.
I will promote myself.I will promote myself. I will promote myself. I will promote myself.
I will.

Vacation Wrap-Up chez Nous

It's unbelievably mild outside and we are in the throes of putting the garden to rest. I want that calm sense that comes from trimming the dead branches, raking up the leaves, pulling up the dahlia tubers to winter over in the shed, the butterfly bush diminished to the ground- all the various chores that insure a nice frosty rest for the lawn, flowers, shrubs and trees. I am often awestruck by the garden's last floral display, and my current favorite is this mystery rose I found on a clearance table at the grocery store last September. Marked $1.99, forlorn and abandoned, I had to bring it home and find it a spot to thrive. Its flowers turned out to be a funny swirl of pink, orange and yellow. Yellow and orange are colors I tend to avoid in the garden, but this plucky rose seems happy here. I relish these late blooms from the plants that continue to flower under less than ideal conditions. My college student is on her way back and it was great to have her home. I really appreciate my family, my husband, the things that mostly work and all the goodness that we know, have and share. For this suburban mom, it doesn't really get much better than this.

Thankfulness

I am in the midst of thankfulness. Gratitude. Call it what you will. Despite things that seem to impact me a lot, and often adversely, there is so much to appreciate it's hard to know where to begin. So I won't. Being a female born in the United States seems like a stroke of good luck compared to the fate of so many children (so eloquently reported by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times among other, distinguished and caring voices describing the plight of children born elsewhere on our globe) combined with the good fortune of having three healthy children none of whom I imagine will ever be sold in to slavery or forced in to a desperate servitude just to stay alive. There is so much luck and good fortune that I don't begin to know where to start on the gratitude list. So, I only hope you similar lives brimming with good luck and good will and wish you many more days filled with thankfulness.

Pageviews all time history 12,000

I do really like round numbers. Nice, biggish sort of round numbers. So, a certain milestone that I must pause and reflect and digest. It certainly hasn't been me who has opened my blog 12,000 times since I started in January of 2010. Especially when I consider that I have dutifully checked the box of the "do not count" your pageviews on the dashboard of my blog's settings. So, somwehere, on some digital device, I am finding ways to share my thoughts and images. When you publish books, royalty statements are the measuring stick of your titles' success (or lack of...). Google is very efficient in sharing when and where a viewer has taken a moment to take a look. So, tomorrow I will give thanks for all the 12,000 times I managed my way into the hearts and minds of my fellow citizens of the world.

Our Post Office on Beekman Avenue....

is threatened with closure. Which makes no sense whatsoever because of the essential services it provides. As it is threatened with possible closure, petitions in support of keeping it open were compiled containing over 2400 signatures (Sleepy Hollow is listed with 10,217 inhabitants). The other evening, in the assembly room in our village hall, the community turned out to meet with members of the our Northeast regional postal service overseeing our area in this evaluation as well as the introduction of our new Postmaster for Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. (Sleepy Hollow was once called North Tarrytown and until 1973 had its own zip code. Another long story.) Our Congresswoman Nita Lowey sent an aide to read a letter she had written to the Postmaster General in an effort to take our post office off the chopping block.

There were many impassioned comments from the floor of my fellow residents, including our mayor, about the importance of our post office to the life blood of our community and especially ours with its substantial immigrant community who rely heavily on post office boxes and money orders. For seniors, its location on a quieter street with accessible parking means not having to cross 4 lanes of busy traffic and then encounter stairs or ramps to enter the building. We do not want to lose this vital piece of our village. On a business level, our village will be gaining in the next ten years a 1000+ new households with the development of the 100 plus acres of the GM site which appears to finally be happening. The expansion of Sleepy Hollow is in the offing. (On a personal note, I love my local post office and am in there 3-5 days of week.) When you run the current numbers, our local post office is not losing any money so it's not clear why it is being considered for elimination in the scheme of things.