Keepers of the Flame

     All it takes now is a glance down the left side of this blog and you will see a fair number of web sites and blogs all related to Ridgewood and its neighbor Hohokus. There are plenty of others I am sure and they will be added in good time. I'm still not sure this is the best platform to do this sort of accounting of events but it is the best one I have found to date. Of course, I am open to suggestions. All the sites listed have the same intent that this one does: be a bulletin board, web portal, and diary. Some sites emphasize one aspect more than others, while I simply go with the flow and try to chronicle it all. I never sit down in front of the keyboard and try to do anything but what is on my mind or has come to my attention. This serendipitous approach keeps me fresh and interested in continuing this pursuit. It also allows me to explore trains of thought that I might have ignored otherwise. I anticipate this particular blog will continue to slowly grow and will add more regular contributors, including a female prospective. For now, what we have going is fine and I appreciate all the supportive email I receive from old pals who check in to tell me they find this interesting and that I should keep up my efforts. I'll do my best to inform readers of what I see going on, to point them to web sites which might be of direct interest, and entertain them (I hope!) from time to time with a picture or story. This is the least I can do to keep some pleasant memories alive and to help folks who sometimes take their current lives too seriously, myself included. Who knows, we might one day use this platform, or the next generation of Social Networking tools that are created to produce some random acts of kindness. Another way of stating this is that we might "Pay It Forward" as a movie of a few years back intended to demonstrate. I'll end this post with a quote from Albert Schweitzer which I trust is apropos :

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into a flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.