Spring has bloomed into summer and 2016 is halfway over! This is always the high season for outdoor events (and events in general) and this year is no different! Lots to do every weekend and many weekend nights as well. Years ago we helped to put on a weekday music event every summer that was very popular with the community—in fact, it’s one of the reasons we decided to create this magazine and website. It was always so much fun to get out and enjoy not only the weather but the friendships that were created and nurtured by it as well.
We like to remember that we only have so many summers to enjoy in our lives with a precious few of them where we have the freedoms to fully enjoy them as we wish. We always encourage our readers to visit another community and checkout local events, especially the smaller intimate ones. It is a wonderful opportunity not only to enjoy yourself but to explore the different lands, culture and customs of those very strange people who live but one town away from us. We find it so much fun to realize just how much is happening all around us and to see how much energy is being poured into the community by so many people of such varied walks of life. It is not just the “artists,” the “retired” people or “students” that are creating interesting “happenings” all around us but it is the bankers, lawyers, police officers, garbage company employees, moms, dads, young, old, middle aged and literally all “types” of people that make our community so diverse and amazing.
This vast array of people includes our neighbors, friends, brothers and sisters, even the strange guy four cubicles down from us at the office. They’re in Rotary, Lions, Soroptimist, Kiwanis, the Scouts, and a host of other clubs and organizations that dot our communities. It is wonderful to see all of that energy and different perspectives coming together. We have been counted as “those” type of people that help put on “those” events for many years. We have been stopped at the grocery store to be asked, “when is that event starting up?” or “are they doing it this year?” Those of you that have spent some time (or lots of time) organizing an event, a parade, a gathering or memorable spectacle, remember the time and energy it took. It probably took a chunk of time away from your family, work, hobbies or favorite TV shows. You still may be working on an event and some of us can only say: “I remember when…”.
The point of this is not to encourage you to volunteer more (though we all should) but to remind us that right now, as you’re reading this, there is a dedicated group of people that are pouring their energy and time into an event that will soon appear in these pages (or maybe it is there now) and they are hoping and praying that we, our friends and family, show up so that it will be a success. That success of course translates into MORE time and energy for them next week, month or year when they do it again.
Come and enjoy that energy with us. Enjoy their vision and creativity. Enjoy the events in these pages or the ones on our website. “Those” people have invested their time to help the community to be better… and because they put on the event AND because we attended it, the community is better. Now go forth and enjoy this summer with us and all the rest of the summers that we still have on this little blue marble that is hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. We would also suggest that when all of us are on our last summer that it will be these events and the people we shared them with that we will remember, more than the time we spent relaxing on our couch.
To our all friends and family that are marking the annual completion of their rotation around that giant ball of plasma that sits in the center of our universe we say Happy Birthday!! Here are but a few of them that we have the space to mention: our mother, Genevieve, Robert’s daughter Veronica as well as our niece, Danielle, along with Julie, Jim, Lisa, Donna, Christine, Victor, Kyle, Sam, Ken, Maureen, Marc, Faith, Ann, Lynn, Karen, Juan, Jodi, Julie, Gigi, Sherry, Kenny, Jack, Jay, Tom, Matt, Jennifer, Clint, Ken, Phil, Amelia, Tina, Doug, Krystal, Bob and Pippen.
Cheers!
Robert Briseño
& Deanna Baillie
