No place like home

Home always looks good to me when I have been away from it for a while—at the end of a long workday, or when I’ve been traveling out of town. But it looks particularly beautiful this time of year, framed in a bonfire of fall foliage, or when pulling into the drive in the evening to the mellow welcome of the porch lights and a carpet of crisp leaves underfoot giving up that unforgettable smell of the season.

Artwork of the Day from 10/5/15. “Moody,” oil painting. Artist: Nancy Brossard. This work is on display at the Adirondack Artists Guild in Saranac Lake, NY through November 3 as part of the solo exhibit “Lakes and Streams.”

We’re lucky to live in such a place. That fact may be harder to credit in other, shall we say, less salubrious months, but there’s nothing like October in the North Country. The river is an easy walk out back. Sometimes a heron will grace the shallows with her presence. Deer use the apple tree in the side yard as their water cooler spot in the morning, and long squadrons of Canada geese convoy south in the dusk.

I’m a partisan. The North Country is my place. That’s why I put my sweat and treasure into activities that sustain it as a vibrant, connected community and a great place to live—into my local library, a favorite service organization, or my place of worship. And I’m a proud partisan of my place of work, too–North Country Public Radio—of which I have been a supporting member for much longer than I have been an employee.

Great places are not just landscapes, and they are not just random collections of people. They are communities within communities in relation to one another and in accord with the requirements of living well within a particular landscape. It takes all of us to make it all work out.

So if you feel this station is one of those important community organizations that makes your life better, makes the North Country a better place to call home, I hope you will join me in putting some of your substance behind our Fall Fundraiser, keeping NCPR strong for another year.

We’re doing great so far. All of you who have already given have taken us by the end of week one more than halfway to our goal. I can’t thank you enough.

Tags: listeningpost