My father is doing okay after a week in intensive care and then a few weeks figuring out medications and getting settled back at home.  I thank you all who have had kinds words of encouragement to me. I appreciate your kindness.

This past week I have been up in Vermont helping my parents put their house on the market (can you imagine a worse week ever?) and trying to help them find a living situation.  Wow, I never knew that options were so limited for people who need one floor living that is handicap accessible, close to public transportation, affordable, and that provides a neighborly setting.  It is sad when people who have lived in a community for a good part of their lives are forced to move to an unknown community in their final years.  We should be having a conversation about what South Berwick will be able to offer as housing options as the baby boomers, who make up a big portion of our population, age.

Anyway, sorry the 236 diner has been so dead.  I have a ton of emails that I haven’t been able to go through yet so my apologies if I haven’t responded to you.  I have a whole bunch of posts to put up next week and will begin catching up on Monday.

I have also put out an invitation to all the candidates for local elections to submit an article about their candidacy to the 236 diner.  I’ve heard from several who plan to participate and will begin running the series the week of the 12th.

Thanks to you for all your kind thoughts for my father’s health.  My father was in intensive care in Boston all week but got out over the weekend.  He is settling in back at home in Vermont now.  I will be spending some time in Vermont this week to help get things organized for ongoing care.  I will be able to begin catching up on the diner and all the email that came last week.  It might take me a week or two to get back into my old posting routine.  Thanks for your patience.

I’m off downeast for a wedding this weekend. I will try to check in on the236diner but I’ll be at a remote campground so internet access may not be in the cards. Enjoy the weekend and be nice to each other on the blog.–Molly

I’m back. Last week I went to Appledore Island with a group of artists for a painting retreat. I intended to blog while out there, but forgot an essential cable for my laptop so ended up with some file uploading issues. It was a great trip and I had the opportunity to stay a few extra days and then had to catch up with my life when I got home. Now I’m back though and have a whole bunch of posts stacked up and ready to go this week. I’m going through the 511 emails in my in box so if you sent me something last week I will get to it soon.

It must really be spring now. I found the first dandelion of the season in my yard this morning. For most people these are big pests, but I am happy with anything that comes up green on my lawn. I long ago gave up the illusion that I would ever have more than 10% grass amongst 90% weeds and moss. In the New York Times last week there was an article about planting a low maintenance environmentally friendly moss lawn that only requires a little bit of watering. I can finally be proud of my moss, apparently it’s the in thing now.

I’ve been slow on posting lately as I’ve had to attend to some consulting projects (income is necessary), but I’ve got some great posts coming up. I’m working on a series about the transfer station. Gary Boucher gave me a great tour and helped me understand where all our trash goes and some of the economics of our waste stream. I’m also working on some stories where you will get to meet some of your neighbors, including some name sharers and the head of one of South Berwick’s oldest businesses.

I’ve noticed that there are some topics that have ongoing discussions running through lots of different posts.  It makes it hard to go back and find someone’s ideas after time has passed.  In an attempt to capture some of these running discussions in a more coherent way I have set up some pages just for these topics.  If you look in the right Menu bar you will see Ongoing Discussions listed and under that: Economic Development, New Library, School Budget, and Town Budget.   These are permanent pages where anyone (e.g. a citizen, a new resident, a council member, someone running for town council or school board, a new town manager) will be able to find out what people are thinking and suggesting about these topics.

Unfortunately I can’t migrate old comments over to the pages.  If you have made comments in the past that you want to save in the new ongoing discussion, please find them (you can search for your name) and copy them into new comments on the pages.  There have been lots of great questions and ideas that should be preserved so others can find them.

I had to do some behind the scenes coding to make these comment pages so if anything wacky (a technical term)  happens let me know so I can fix.

I know it isn’t good manners to remind people that it’s your birthday, but today the 236 diner is three months old. To celebrate I spent some time looking at the usage statistics for the site. When I started it I had pretty modest expectations. It is what is called a “hyperlocal” site in that its focus is on one very small geographic area. I knew it would only appeal to a small number of people compared to blogs that cover topics of universal interest like sports or national politics. So I have been very surprised at how much use it is getting and thought I would share some of the usage information here.

First a note about website usage statistics: The numbers are inexact since they may undercount when more than one person or computer uses a single internet connection or network and they may overcount sometimes when users reload pages. But they do give an estimate of usage and trends.

How many different people come to the site?

The number of unique visitors to the blog has just about doubled every month. Amazing. I expect that to level off at some point. Even though I know that South Berwick is the center of the universe, I think there will be a limit to how many people share that belief.

How many visits do users make to the site?

The number of visits to the site is growing fast. In April so far there have been an average of 562 visits per day. Since this is a blog that gets updated frequently I hope people will come back on a regular basis. That seems to be happening. In March there were over 12,000 visits which means an average of about six visits per individual user.

In March readers began to make regular comments on the site. That has really boosted visits. As the administrator of the site I can see the real time activity on the site. People click in to read all of the comments. Yesterday morning I posted an In the News item and since then 250 people have clicked into the comments. So when you write comments, people are reading what you say.

Weekdays are the busiest with spikes first things in the morning and then around lunch. Weekend days are lowest usage, especially if the weather is nice (which seems like a healthy thing).

I want to thank everyone for visiting the site and for participating in the discussions. I really appreciate your suggestions. I think the reason that the site has been so popular is that the residents of South Berwick are hungry for more information about the town and want to communicate with each other and our town government to make this a better place.

Things at town hall are tense right now and it is frustrating to know all this is going on. It is a difficult time for South Berwick. I want to remind the236diner users to keep it civil here. We will get through this time and whatever happens, we will need to move on as a community. So be kind to each other here, even when you don’t agree.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard for groups working on solving problems and making things better is this: “Be hard on the problems, easy on the people.”

–Molly

the236diner now has a community events calendar, where all things South Berwick can be listed. I hope this will become a central place to find out about what is happening in the community. Check it out to see what’s going on and make sure you get your events, meetings, or other happenings listed.

You can get to it on the right menu by clicking on Events Calendar under the “Other Stuff” heading. Once there, you will see a link with instructions for submitting events.

Coming next: A directory of South Berwick with links to government, organizations, businesses and whatever else is important.