Happy Thanksgiving, Berkeley Heights

We want to express our thanks and gratitude to the families and public employees who are part of the BHCW community and who have read, participated in, and contributed to its mission.

We are extraordinarily privileged to live in a country where we can speak and vote as freely as we breathe and where our children do not have to worry about war, clean water, or whether they can even attend school.

Most of us in Berkeley Heights are aware of that and the abundance we as a community have in addition to these benefits. I try to think about that every day. The fact that I don’t have to worry about whether my kids will have food on the table is something I don’t ever want to take for granted.

This community is what it is because of the everyday folks who go to work and pay a crippling sum to support our community so that their families (and ours) have better lives. Most of us help our communities in quiet, substantial ways that won’t be blasted on social media, showered with awards, or advertised on community media outlets.

Parents who volunteer for our schools, cook meals for neighbors, volunteer to coach, help at their house of worship, or pick up another family’s kids when a parent is running late for work.

Seniors who use their free time and expertise to research, study, and inform community outlets about what is going on in our government because the rest of us are stretched too thin trying to afford to live here.

Teachers, Paras and School staff who perform miracles for our children every day that cannot be advertised and whose profession often only gets talked about when something goes wrong.

How we are there for each other daily, minute to minute, with these large and small exchanges of help and support makes our community unique and special.

I often think of Berkeley Heights as a blue-collar community with a little more money in its pockets – I’m not sure why that is – I’m guessing it’s because most of the people I come across in this community aren’t elitist assholes.

I want to believe, and I think it’s the case, that we are good people willing to do good things for our neighbors. People in our community raise their kids to treat people right. You might roll your eyes at that, but most of the kids I come across in this town are down-to-earth and well-mannered – just good kids, which reflects on the families who live here.

I’m worried that as time goes on, this will fade, but that’s up to us and how we continue to treat one another and how we treat the new folks who join our community. Let’s be thankful for what we have, remember why we have it, and remain there for one another.

We will be taking a break the next few days – other than a couple of updates on the OPRA stuff, we will be enjoying time off.

Happy Thanksgiving, Berkeley Heights!