Our readers make The Weekly work

One of the best things about working for The Weekly is that it gets results. A story about Dan Bean, a firefighter who is restoring an old fire engine, resulted in a call from someone who had some of the truck parts Bean needs.

An article about the Meals for Me Warm Hands project brought yarn donations, knitters and crocheters to make afghans that will be raffled this winter to benefit the program.

The story about Robert Hawes, who received an award for his contribution to the preservation of heritage turkeys, prompted others interested in rare fowls to get in touch with him to share information.

What that says to Editor Roxanne Moore Saucier and me is that The Weekly has become an important way for people in our readership area to connect with one another – whether it’s to provide items someone else needs, to share specialized information or simply to read that a friend’s son or daughter was named to a college dean’s list. Of such small exchanges is a sense of community built and maintained.

That’s why we like to hear about events that are happening at your schools, in your towns, your organizations, your businesses and your families. We like to hear about the good things that are going on in your towns and we like to trumpet that news to our readers. True, we can’t always use all the news of all the doings sent to us, but we do our best to use what we can in the space that we are allotted.

We like getting the photographs you send, too. It’s important when you send photos to us that you include detailed information about what’s going on in the picture and that the people in the photos are identified. We need to have a phone number included, too, so if we have questions about the photo, we can call. We also need an address where the photos can be returned.

So as we take up our tasks of the new year, we thank you for contributions of the past year to The Weekly and look forward to another year of spreading your news.

Ardeana Hamlin compiles community news for The Weekly and writes the By Hand column Tuesdays in the Bangor Daily News.