Grateful for Family, Friends and Our Readers
As we finish up our 24th December edition, set to spice up gatherings for the holiday season, we’re forever grateful to our readers, supporters, columnists and contributors more than ever.
Our aim has remained the same since our first issue in September 2001. Our efforts are “to preview rather than review,” always looking forward to new events that become traditions in this ever-evolving community. Simply put, we hope to get you to concerts, special events and important fundraisers on time, mindful there’s “unity” in community, even among the challenges that unite us.
And today, Nov. 28, 2024, we hope folks enjoy the annual Lions Club Turkey Trot, one of more than 1,000 Turkey Trots across this great nation that raises funds for many worthy causes.
Appreciate the power of Thanksgiving with family, friends and neighbors. For more than 75 years, the descendants of the Gertrude and Paul Mitchell gathered together to count their blessings since the days the family all fit in the dining room of their farm in Battle Ground, Indiana. The photo at the top of this post was taken in 1950.
And with cherished memories for years and years of singing “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go” with my two younger brothers as we crossed the Wabash River on our approach to Battle Ground, I am forever grateful to count my blessings for my precious family every day and especially on Thanksgiving Day.
‘If the only prayer you said in your whole life were “thank you,” that would be enough.’ –Meister Eckhart, German Philosopher (1260-1328)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Stephanie Penick
P.S. Here’s the first-ever group photo of folks reading Positively Naperville at Ross Camp near Lafayette, Indiana, where the Mitchell Family hosted its annual Thanksgiving for more than 30 years, the second of two camp grounds where the family stuffed their turkeys when so many relatives could no longer fit around the dining room table in the farmhouse in Battle Ground.
And one more PN reader is pictured here at Mount Mitchell in North Carolina in October 2020. Mount Mitchell is the the highest peak east of the Mississippi River. Now you know!
One more thing…Thanks to all members of the military and first responders serving here and around the world. Thanks, too, to everybody who is working today so folks can travel safely to visit family and friends.
