Posts
VETERAN'S DAY... a day to pause and reflect...to pull in our aligned forces of gratitude, for those who 
(pics are of my mom who served in the navy during WWII; below she is pictured with comedian, Red Skelton...)
© Copyright 2008 - This posting and the contents written here, except where noted, are the property of Mara Hawks, All Rights Reserved
Active in Alabama, Mara Hawks, REALTOR with FIRST REALTY of Auburn, AL, #1 Real Estate Team in Lee County, THE LEADER in professional real estate services in Auburn, Opelika & Lee County for over 3 decades! Committed to INTEGRITY, KNOWLEDGE & SERVICE.
CLICK CART TO SHOP FOR HOMES IN AUBURN-OPELIKA, ALABAMA
In support of The Food Bank of East Alabama, The Opelika-Auburn Newspaper staff teamed up with the WRBL News 3 group, Praise 88.7 and The Well, to sponsor a day-long food drive on Saturday, Nov 1st. The event was held at the Opelika Wal-Mart Supercenter. It opened up with Opelika Mayor, Gary Fuller, cutting a ribbon, marking the start of building community spirit and sponsorship for the drive that will be unceasing in its efforts to collect food for the fall and holiday season. This is the time of year when the supply of food begins to wane, and the Food Bank relies on our support for replenishing. Several of us volunteered to greet shoppers and distributed the shopping list of most needed items. A lot of shoppers participated, and it was heartwarming to see the efforts some of them made, no matter how small, all of the generous donations added up to a community gift for neighbors in need. When we share our resources, we provide essential nourishment and enrichment for the heart of our communities, blessing our homes and families. This day was big with blessings.
"I BAGGED HUNGER"
Volunteer, JR SMITH, Rotary Club
Volunteers, IWPU
Auburn Jr High School JAZZ BAND
That song won't leave my head this morning. It must be the singing alarm that is reminding me to turn my clocks back one hour tonight. Of course the task itself takes me nearly an hour, so I never quite feel the savings. In fact, I feel I lose a couple of hours, just trying to re-orient myself and adjust all my calendars and clocks. We always remark how the Summer Solstice (June 21st) is the longest day of the year-- although it's still only a 24-hour one. I would just have to argue that it's when we turn our clocks back, because we've just charted a 25-hour day. I've never understood why we try to turn the time back. It's literally impossible. The Native Americans understood the foolishness of this concept:
TGIF because I'll tune in once again to the 12-week Social Media & Marketing Webinar, hosted by DOMUS CONSULTING GROUP, moderated by founders 
out, illustrating how THE PUBLISHER is a website that produces content and a SUBSCRIBER is the reader of that content. Tools like FEED READERS (google reader, netvines & tons of others) provide a framework for ordering and organizing all of your subscriptions. This basically allows the media to arrive in your inbox, saving you a lot of time and effort and navigating around. It's all very cool, calm and collected---and did I mention FUN?!
FIRE.' My eyes wandered to the fireplace in the room that I took for granted all summer... FIRE, burned into my memory, emerged as a 
campfire of images...from birthday candles and roasting marshmallows to the smell of fear & wildfires that charged through mountain regions of places I'd lived---Southern California, South Africa and Colorado... ancient memories, somehow preserved, of black kettles over flames that fed thousands for centuries, sounds of welders and blacksmiths...the images spiraled to the dawn of Creation, flames of fire, forever striking the surface (chronos) of our existence and the depth (kairos) of our being...the firing of Light that sparks Soulfulness...that carries kindling from heart to heart,
Finally! A HAPPY HEADLINE is found in this morning's news, coming out of my hometown of heroes--- CHICAGO! A great town with 2 great baseball teams (although only one of them ever actually wins), a wonderful stock of humanity, excellent leadership (I'm recollecting the decades of Mayor Daley Sr and currently, his son), culturally diverse and architecturally rich, and NOW, today, a sheiff, TOM DART from Albany, IL has taken a historical stand, I believe, as he is refusing to foreclose on 4700 properties, bringing to the forefront the underlying problem of too many rent-paying tenants and their non-mortgage paying landlords. He was quoted as saying "We won't be doing the banks' work for them anymore...we won't surprise tenants with an eviction order intended for their landlord." Well, the banks may have something to do after all, these days, since they don't seem to be in the lending business at the moment. And while they're at it, maybe they can start doing some fundraising to reimburse city governments that have had to respond to discontented neighbors to clean up their neighborhoods, overgrown and 
aesthetically disturbed by empty homes. Seems like it's our tax dollars going out to protect the bank's accumulating assets while they sit on their, well, whatevers. Read