By Staff of The Mountain Enterprise

We don’t get to say it often enough, but we think about it every single day: Thank you to our readers and to our advertisers, to our neighbors, families and friends in this beautiful Mountain Community.

We are thankful for your plucky optimism, your creativity and innovation, your generosity to each other when you learn of a neighbor in need.

Your faces flash through our minds when we think of all we have to be thankful for today: All the people who think of calling us immediately when something happens that is newsworthy; all the community reporters and photographers who enrich mountain life with your reports about kids’ sports and community events; for our churches and the parents who run car washes and bake sales so youth can have opportunities; our teachers, the wonderful people in our schools who work so hard for the joy of seeing the light of understanding in children’s eyes.

We are thankful for the firefighters, sheriffs, highway patrol and U.S. Forest Service workers who share our struggles, help us in a crisis and stand on the front line to protect us in time of need.

We are thankful for all those volunteer board members who step forward to help run our school districts, who provide our water, who join the Fire Safe Council, who train as Community Emergency Response Teams, Search & Rescue and Nordic Ski Patrol in these mountains where self-sufficiency and preparedness are so essential.

We want to thank Cindy Holloway, Moesha, Cleo and Michele Maga for sharing discovery with us in these pages and Linda Curtis who for over two years has been our modest behind-the-scenes meteorologist providing temperatures and rainfall readings every week, and Stan McCuen and his family for insights into a world we knew too little of before. We thank Don Eubank for his ever-inquisitive mind, and Richard Hoegh for being a rock with wisdom, Gigi Day for effervescent inspiration, Bonnie Kane for endless resourcefulness, Rosalie Maggio for encouragement, Chuck Noble, Holly Van Houten, Mitch Wood, Kristina Graves, Linda MacKay, Michael Oman, Hermina and Chuck Bragg, Wende Wagner, Tonya Zorich, the Lewis family, Kati DeLaurier, Ponni Stewart, Charles Stewart, Katherine King, the Mullen family, Sara Haflich, our intern Sara Woerter and her mom and dad, Dee Bumgardner, the Ladins, Liz Bolden, Anders Hostmark, Laura Olney, Paula Regan, the Durocher family, Edie and Lynn Stafford, Peter Kjenaas and Michelle Morain, the Kern County Grand Jury, Kat and Bill Fair, Sue Brown, Bob Saberhagen, Shannon Norris, Cindy Brown, Cristal Vivirito, Shelly Mason, the Warkentin family, Dena Kiouses, Sydney Cline, Abbe Gore, Lori Scott and Jennifer Smith, Fred Rose, Scott Robinson, David Dominguez, Bonnie Greer, Lisa and Josh Arreola, Barry Zoeller, Janine Tominaga, Rebecca Swiggum, Jim McDevitt, Jan de Leeuw, Doug Peters, Ruth Handy, Lonon Smith, JoAnne Klein, Shelia Clark, Jim and Fae Lumsden, Laura and Bob Mills, Harrison Scott, Tom Haugen, Christy Fitzgerald, Ray Watson, Eloise Richer, Brian Bierman, Richard Olsen, Beth Villanueva, the Edwards family, the Berg family, Mark Corum, Carl Marsee, Juanda DeShazer, Cliff Thompson, Paula Harvey, Alice Peternel, Mar Preston, Gene Tackett, Anne Weber, Chief Dennis Thompson, Dan Penner, Kim Volkmar, Sandy Carter, Diane Duquette, Shawna Parkinson, Mark Bailey, Toby Brault, Terri Geivet, Gigi Nommensen, Jerry Fossler, Peter Gullerud, Ron Quintana, Ileene Anderson, Dave Hook, the Throckmorton family, Rick Davis, Darrel Hildebrand, the Anderson family, Sue Nicoll, Sue Nichols, Kate Donahue, Simba Roberts, Robin and Torri Barrington, Lori Murphy, the Brennan Family, the Buma family, the Hurst family, Maggie Van Ostrand, Cathy Wallace, the Mack family, Sgt. Bryan Armendariz, Tom Kuekes, Tim Garcia, Coach Jerry Quick, Leslie Bever, Helenna Forrester, Karen Bailey, Dave da handyman, Joel Robinson, Christine Kearns-Brown, Sean Malis, Patrice Stimpson, Nick Onyshko Pam McGee, Brenda Zoppe, Donna Van Hooser, Randy Coleman, Eileen Borzencki, Stephanie Anderson and Chloe Ladd, Patty and Cliff Wallace, and so many more (you know who you are, and we do too)— community reporters, letter writers and sources who have guided us with wisdom, grace, wit, patience and sometimes anger to help us get it right.

We also thank those wonderful people from AARP who meet every Thursday to label our newspapers so our staff can get them into the mail, and to John “Rocky” Canada who gets them into the distribution boxes all over town.

We thank our own families for putting up with us when we work long hours, to Todd, Nick, Danielle, Joe, Liam, Alex, new baby Itai and Vincent, Juanda, Earl, Eric, Dawn, Tim, Paula, Greg, Chris, Josie. You are all in our hearts this Thanksgiving.

This is part of the November 28, 2008 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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