This is Memorial Day weekend in the USA, a time to remember those who died in military service. Photo CC by Alisha Vargas on Flickr
The Brag Basket is open! This one is for May 27-29, 2016. Bring your good news, big or small, to share with everyone.
What can you share in the Brag Basket?
- introduce yourself
- share some great news from this week
- celebrate progress, even baby steps
- congratulate a friend
- applaud for each other
- confess your undying love for rural places
How do you join in?
- Below this post is the comment section. Add your good news there.
- Reading this in your email? Hit reply.
Don’t like to brag? Just share some good news for someone you’re happy for. It’s a conversation with friends. So jump in. And remember to cheer for each other.
Carol Middick sent this via email:
“Four months ago citizens in Snyder and Mountain Park, Ok began meeting to “Save Our Towns”. The towns are 3 miles apart and have Tom Steed Lake and Great Plains State Park within 2 miles. We are loosing businesses at an alarming rate mostly due to owners retiring. From the beginning the members felt Save Our Towns was not the name for our group. We wanted something that reflected the spirit of our communities. When designing t-shirts for the group, the high school student council created the saying, Two Towns, One Heart. We instantly adopted this as our new name. We have many activities and projects planned. Our goal is to support our community businesses and families in a manner that will attract new ones. Two Towns, One Heart: Snyder and Mountain Park is on the road to success.”
Love this, Carol! You’re making good progress and getting people involved.
From: Nik Groothuis sent his story in by the contact form:
This past week our community garden plot finally dried out enough for our volunteer community group, Casey In Action (CIA), to plant for the summer. A group of us planted 40 tomato plants, 18 sweet pepper plants, 8 rows of green beans and several hills of zucchini, yellow summer squash, and cucumbers. The garden plot is on a vacant lot that one of our members allows us to utilize for this purpose. He also tills the garden and mows the area that is still grass.
We are a small Illinois community of around 3000. CIA is an official not for profit which allows us to accept donations and reciprocate with a tax letter. We operate via this mechanism and fundraising throughout the year. Besides the garden, we have done and continue to do downtown beautification — funding and placing some 20 flower planters throughout the downtown, as well as benches with donor’s names that we solicited donations for –, planting and maintaining flowers in small areas along the streets heading to our beautiful park, doing a twice yearly old appliance pickup throughout the town, purchasing playground equipment for the town park, providing the impetus for and helping to maintain a skate/bike park area in the park, helping to organize and supervise a high school senior work day downtown each Spring where windows are washed and general cleanup is done, helping business owners with minor repairs and painting, making donations and/or volunteering to help other community groups, ….. really, we take any suggestions from our members and other folks, and if our group thinks it is feasible and “do-able”, we go about the planning and get it done!
I love how it’s not just about community gardening but also about supporting local business owners and other community groups!