SWG Coffee Social: Thanks For A Great 2011

The problem with round-up and thank you posts is that it is too easy to forget someone.  For example the inspiration for my post SWG Coffee Social: The Weekly Roundup Post was Classy Career Girl and her Monday Motivation: Your Weekly Career Links.  Every Monday Anna posts a collection of career related links she's discovered around the web. They are the perfect way to start my week.  When her weekly post appeared in my reader the Monday following my roundup post, I realized I had forgotten her. I would now like to give a big thank you to Classy Career Girl for providing me with a little motivation each week.

 

I also want to point out Classy Career Girl's post 2012 Countdown where she lists her 2011 accomplishments. Many of the items Anna listed are good examples of things you should do if you would like to turn your blog into a business.

I would also like to thank:

- Webb From the Garden Bench my most frequent commenter.  Just when I begin to think my latest post is the biggest dud ever, along comes Webb with a fantastic comment adding new perspective, information and insight to my post. She is also there to offer support and advice when I need it.  Thank you Webb, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. 

- A big Thank You to every one of you who commented on my blog this year, my blog would not be the same without you.

- Grace of GRACEful Retirement for including my blog on her blogroll.  Nicole and Maggie mentioned in the comments on SWG Coffee Social: The Weekly Roundup Post that they get to my blog via Grace's blogroll. I have since reviewed my stats and realized more readers come to my blog via Grace’s blog roll than any other source. Thank you Grace for including me and improving my blog's traffic.

- Thanks to all the other bloggers who have added me to your blogroll. Also, if you are a blogger who blogs about issues that are of interest to women let me know I would be happy to add you to my blogroll.

- Sarah at Citizen Reader for linking to my post Band Discussion: How did you get into nonfiction? in her Tuesday Articles: Viva nonfiction! I was honored to be included in her post. Her link made this post one of my most popular of the year. Thank you Sarah and also thanks for keeping my nonfiction TBR list full.
 
- Also thank you to Nicole and Maggie and everyone else who has linked to my posts in 2011.
 
- Thank you to each and every one of you who took time out of your busy schedule to read my posts.  I wish all of you a Happy and Healthy 2012.  Thanks again.

Remembering: A Lesson in Community

If you are a regular follower of my blog you may have noticed I usually post on Sundays. With today being September 11, 2011 my first thought was to not acknowledge the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and schedule my weekly blog post for Monday.

Then my brother who lives in NYC sent me this photo he took of the 9/11 memorial:

I found it so moving, I decided to include it in a post and write about how important it is to never forget what happened on 9/11. To include my own memories; where I was, who I was with, how I remembered the crisp air of that September day and what I had been wearing.

Then this morning I read a post on Florinda's blog The 3 R's. She writes about community, reminding us September 11, 2001 was a day that brought people together, no matter where they were.
She writes:

We haven't always consistently maintained that sense of community and connectedness throughout the last decade, but it's important to remember how important it is.

I put off writing this post and went outside to read the Sunday paper with my dogs. I wasn’t able to concentrate on my reading. I kept thinking about Florinda’s post and how unconnected I have become in the past ten years in my own community.

I thought back to the days immediately following 09/11/01. How time seemed to stand still as I mourned with friends, family, co-workers and even with strangers at the gym. We put our politics aside and banded together to raise money, share news or to just say hello. I thought about bipartisan politics and how divided we as a nation have become over the past ten years. About the long winter of protests here in Wisconsin, recall elections and families who are now divided between those who are union members and those who are not.

I thought of my own neighbors who before yesterday I hadn’t talked to in over a year. This past year the neighbors on my block joined together to create and pay for a neighborhood improvement project. My home’s property is located just outside of the project line, so I didn’t attend the planning meetings. Plus, their meetings conflicted with my favorite aerobic class; my husband did attend and kept me informed as to what was going on. Yesterday I walked down the block to take a couple of photos of the project.

I came home two hours later with a bag of flower seeds, freshly picked vegetables, new gardening tips, my photos of the project and a years worth of neighborhood gossip. Most of my neighbors were outside. They invited me into their yards and gave me tours of their gardens. I apologized for not attending their parties. I told one of them I still wanted to volunteer with a gardening group she works with and that I still planned on becoming a master gardener. Because these activities either occur while I am working or are too time consuming, my involvement would have to wait until I am retired - in ten years. She was flabbergasted - ten years.

My work is demanding, stressful and not community oriented. I learned earlier this year I had to say no to outside engagements for my own sanity. For the first time in eleven years, I am not on the board of an organization I am involved with and I must say I miss the community.

My current community involvement consists of on-line activity, going to work and to the gym. I have made several friends at the gym so when I do work out I feel as though I am taking care of myself and engaging in the community. Work is another story I will save for a future post.

My husband would say I spend too much time on-line. I do spend a lot of time reading other blogs, but I don’t comment or write posts as often as I should. I consider my blog’s regular commenter's my friends. Recently one of them experienced a health scare in her family then her home was threatened by Hurricane Irene. I found myself wishing I could call her to see if there was anything I could do and to offer my support.

In the end, I decided who cares where I was on 9/11/2001. I used this day and this post to reflect on my community involvement. My neighbor has a point; I can't wait another ten years to get involved. I have to figure out how to realign my life to include more community participation. I encourage all of you to reflect on your own community involvement. In addition to never forgetting what happened on September 11, 2001, it is important for all of us to consider how we can achieve our own sense of community and connectedness.

BAND Discussion: How did you get into non-fiction?

This week I decided to participate in the August BAND discussion. BAND - Bloggers’ Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees - is a group organized to promote the joy of reading nonfiction. The members of the group are “advocates for nonfiction as a non-chore.” Each month, a member of BAND hosts a discussion on their blog relating to nonfiction. This month’s host for the discussion is Amy of Amy Reads.

Amy asks:
How did you get into reading nonfiction? Do you remember your first nonfiction book or subject? If so, do you still read those subjects?

I mentioned in a previous post I was an avid reader as a teenager. Living on a farm in rural Wisconsin my reading was more about trying to figure out life (or the life I thought I was missing out on) than anything else. The books I read were mostly fiction with no particular preference for any one genre. In college I gave up recreational reading for textbooks and did not return to reading for pleasure until after I had passed the CPA exam over a decade later.

It had been so long since I had read an actual novel I initially had a hard time determining what I wanted to read. I started with the classics and fiction recommended in the newspaper or featured on best-seller lists. I discovered Oprah's book club and began making my way through her selections. With each book I became increasingly disenchanted with fiction. If you have ever read any of Oprah’s book club picks you may understand my disenchantment – the majority of them are down right depressing. The book that pushed me over the top and into the forays of nonfiction was Tawni O’Dell’s Back Roads - it seemed as though O’Dell had taken every horrible thing that could possibly happen to a person and crammed it into one book. After Back Roads, I was done with Oprah’s book club and began looking for a different reading experience.

Shortly thereafter, I took Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail with me on a camping trip. This book was one of the funniest books I had ever read and a perfect pick for a vacation in the woods. I enjoyed learning about the Appalachian Trail and jotted the following note from the book in my journal:

200 year old pecan trees were commonly chopped down just to make it easier to harvest the nuts on the topmost branches.

When I returned, I decided to read more nonfiction and found this list* of Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction at the library. I read Steven Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before and Caroline Alexander's The Bounty : The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. Each of these books led to more note taking and a realization that I enjoyed reading to learn and discover the truth instead of the propaganda.

From there I discovered book blogs most notably Citizen Reader reading many of the books she featured. Some of my favorites include Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, Paul Clemens's Made in Detroit, and Richard Longworth's Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism.

Currently I read nonfiction almost exclusively. I enjoy almost anything nonfiction, but prefer memoirs, biographies, history, business and economics books; basically any book that teaches me something new about what is going on in the world.

*This is the on-line version of the original list. Steven Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage is no longer featured.