A Few Quick Announcements

Hey all, this is going to be a another quick one because the main announcement is that after this week, I'm switching the newsletter to Thursday for a while. I think it's going to fit into my schedule better, and help me take weekends actually off over the winter. In the meantime:

In a twist that will surprise no one who's been following the newsletter for a while, I lost track of an event that was supposed to be on my calendar, and cross-scheduled the Dec. 2nd emergency food bucket day with the Money out of Politics event hosted by Common Ground. Which I'm also helping to organize 😂. I swear I've tried like 30 different calendar systems over the years and none of them have worked for longer than six months or so. It's a little late to move it now, so I'm recommending that people try to nab one of the early shifts over at our signup, and then head over to the Common Ground event at White Lake Community Library at 5pm. It's a good opportunity to learn about and sign an important petition. If you can't make an earlier shift, go ahead and sign up for an evening shift and I'll assume you'll be leaving early or arriving late so you can make it to the library. We can bag up beans any time, but this is a real opportunity to make a difference in the future of our democracy.

We officially broke even on rent for the Artisan Market booth this year! Technically we came in $1 short, but Kelly from the Friends of the Library gave me $1 when I told her that, so 🎉! Luckily, we're not in it for the money, and on the solidarity front, this year's Market season was a huge success. We went from 40 newsletter subscribers to more than 130, and we had hundreds if not thousands of conversations with neighbors and visitors alike. We learned a lot along the way, and we're looking forward to the opportunity to iterate on things next year.
Our promotion for this year's holiday walk was "one free dog toy if you bring your dog in to say hi", and we got to meet so many dogs! Here are some of the ones I remembered to take pictures of:

In honor of all of our canine visitors, this week's recommendation is The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McDonnell. There's a lot of misinformation about dog behavior out there, often pushed by humans (and corporate TV channels) who have their own psychological issues around dominance behavior and want to project it onto dogs. In reality, dog social behavior is much more driven by communication and negotiation. If we put those big monkey brains we're so proud of to use, we can learn to understand what our dogs are trying to communicate, and help them understand our needs in return. I read thirty or forty books on dog training and cognition when we first got Scruffy, and out of those, The Other End of the Leash was the one that stuck with me longest.
I haven't done my nails yet, because I sat down thinking this was going to a quick hundred-word announcement that I was moving the newsletter to Thursdays, and then I realized it was Thanksgiving this week and I ended up writing the whole thing without grabbing my polish. But I did show you a bunch of pictures of dogs, so I think we're even 😆
Have a good Thanksgiving! If I don't see you around town, I'll see you back here next week.