|
by Glenn C. Koenig, Webmaster at Town Wide Mall Maynard, MA - This weekend, Maynard residents will have two opportunities to celebrate the coming winter season, although the weather is likely to leave us feeling as if winter is here already! These events are held every year around this time and are familiar to long time residents; however newcomers to town may not know much about them, so please help spread the word.
The event starts at 5:45 PM, in Memorial park (across Summer Street from the Fine Arts Theater), with carolers singing and the lighting of the tree and menorah.
The Holiday Parade is organized by a separate organization, the Maynard Holiday Parade Committee, headed up by Director Jennifer Picorelli. Numerous sponsors and volunteers collaborate to put the parade together each year. Details are at their "Light Up the Holidays" web site: https://www.lightuptheholidaysmaynard.com/
Commentary I thought of doing this story recently, when I saw predictions of unseasonably cold weather for this weekend. I know that many volunteers have put in hours of work to make these events successful, and I thought it would a shame if attendance was low because of the cold. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of ArtSpace, one of the non-profit organizations that will be open during the stroll. I am likely to be standing outdoors to welcome strollers to the studios at 9 Nason Street, later on in the evening, so believe me, I will be sure to dress warmly for the weather! My suggestion for everyone is to show old man winter that you've got what it takes, and don't let that deter you from having a good time this weekend! I recommend you dress in plenty of layers during the stroll, as you may be indoors much of the time, enjoying what the participating organizations have to offer. Viewing the parade on Sunday will involve being outdoors for longer periods, so layers may not be as important (as there will be no need to remove some while indoors). Perhaps just good basic winter wear (coats, hats, scarves and boots) will be best. Another thing that occurred to me is that many events in Maynard are promoted on Facebook. I don't see a problem with this, however, there are people who do not wish to have a Facebook account, and others who, perhaps new to town, don't know where to look for information on community events. I have provided a guide on the Opinion page, here on the Town Wide Mall web site, called "What's going on in town." It's in the form of a PDF document that can be downloaded, simply by clicking on the title on that page. In it, I list a number of other sources of information about whats going on in Maynard. So, I invite you to please let folks know about this story and the PDF document, especially if they are new to town. Either way, I hope to see you downtown this weekend! Town Wide Mall Update Frequent followers of this web site may have noticed that I have not published a story since late October, about six weeks ago. Back then, I could see that interest in the election was growing more and more intense, fueled by a flood of stories about the campaigns, carried by national and regional news media. It seemed disingenuous to me to carry on with local news, as if none of that was going on. How could I ignore all the high emotions people were experiencing about the election? I decided to wait until after a sort of "cooling down" period to elapse before I started again. I also noticed something else. I have slowed down in publishing somewhat, compared to when I started doing this, back in April 2023. As with many things, I had a lot of energy at first. But after many late nights and hard work, I began to realize how much effort being a good journalist really takes - a lot! Next year, I will celebrate my 75th birthday, so I don't quite have the energy I did when I was 20 or 30 years old. I have made a few attempts to engage others in doing some local journalism on their own, with the hopes that we could network with each other, perhaps using a "I'll do this kind of story, you do some other kind," approach. (So far, I have only had one other reporter do two (excellent) stories before stopping to attend to other matters.) I have not carried high school sports, weddings, obituaries, or public safety logs, ... some of the standard fare in traditional publishing. Perhaps someone else might want to publish those things? Also, I have yearned to return to some other projects that I have put off, since starting Town Wide Mall. One of my main interests is video, but I've left precious little time to work on any video projects in the past two years. So, I am facing a bit of a dilemma. I don't want to stop doing this, yet I want to change the pace a bit. One idea I had was to invite people to suggest story ideas. Perhaps you are curious about about something, but don't have the time to research yourself. If you tell me (via the Contact Us page) about your interest, that might give me a continued sense of the "heartbeat" of the community, and point me in the direction of stories of interest. Another idea I had was to take that a step further, perhaps. Let's say you had some time to gather a bit of information about a story, but you're not up to fleshing it out into a full fledged report, with a headline, proper journalistic story structure, proofreading, photographs, web page layout, and publicity. Then you could "hand off the baton," so to speak, so I could then take what you had so far, and carry it through. If you have thoughts or ideas about any of this, I'd love to know them. (It's better if you leave comments here, rather than on Facebook, as it's easier for me to refer back to them later.) I have thought of recruiting students or interns, but with the overall decline in revenues in the news business over the last two decades or so, most young people rightly don't see a career in journalism as very promising. Even if there are some who are interested, it's a two way street. They might help me in producing stories, but I would then have to devote time to a teaching role. There are always trade-offs. I do want to thank all the people who have donated funds so far to help me continue. I have been remiss in not thanking each donor individually, but again, that is one of the "back room" functions of a news organization that I have neglected. Another is creating an e-mail list, to notify people who are not on Facebook, when I publish a story. After all, I started doing this for the stories, and for you, the readers, so I have typically focused on the next story to do, while letting other functions languish. Recently, I have been planning to get up to speed on some of them. Thus far, I have put over 500 hours of work into Town Wide Mall, and have gathered just under $1000 in donations since I started, so that works out to slightly under $2.00 per hour. Take out my expenses, and it's even less. Clearly, I'm not in this for the money! At least I've published 82 stories (including this one), so I'm certainly proud of that. Although I could run advertising or apply for grants, both of those things take considerable effort to manage, taking time and energy away from the basic job of reporting. One thing I can say is that the response I've gotten from everyone so far has been overwhelmingly supportive. I am grateful for the feedback you have given me and it tells me that I'm doing something that people need and appreciate. Town Wide Mall is free for anyone to read and carries no advertising, so our only means of support is from donations. Please consider helping with a donation of any amount. Click on the Donate button, below, to see the options.
2 Comments
12/6/2024 08:51:30 am
Thank you so much for creating Town Wide Mall. You’ve addressed topics that benefitted from explanation and your articles are clearly written and educational. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
February 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed