Saturday, November 18, 2017

Is There Life After Breakfast

As we head towards Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays, the year seems to feel like it's accelerating. Perhaps because the daylight has shifted, the days are all shorter and more jammed with activities. Personal calendars that were already pretty full are now loaded with holiday parties, travel, shopping outings and all kinds of other activities. 

So here I am on a Saturday morning lobbying you to not only put another event into the mix but one that happens today. Trust me on this one, you'll thank me later. Today, starting at ten and running through the middle of the afternoon, is the annual holiday festival with many local area artisans offering some pretty amazing items suitable for gifting to others (and, truth be told, also keeping for yourself).

The Otis Library on Main Street in Norwich is, for me, the last man standing who is now being rewarded for steadfastness. A decade ago, there was very nearly nothing in downtown, aside from potential. And now, after a lot of work from a lot of different folks, there are actual businesses lining the streets around the library with even more on the way. 



As I've said a million, billion times because it's completely true, Otis like so many other libraries across our country is not close to the same place we went to as kids, wherever that library was. Here in Norwich and elsewhere I'm sure, city downtown districts look to the library the way the fingers on the hand look to the thumb.

We have an ongoing discussion going on here about needing a 'community center' and, for me, we already sort of have one in the Otis Library, bustling with more activities and uses than either of us have fingers and toes (leave your shoes on; I believe we're on the honor system around here). 

So find the time today to head downtown and enjoy yourself and the company of so many others you probably haven't seen since this time last year. And if the latter is indeed the case, remember (and I am proof of this) women tend to age like wine, men, like milk.
-bill kenny

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