Welcome to my brand new blog.

On Saturday, March 20th, 2010, I received a wonderful gift. The Atlantic County Chapter of AAUW [the American Association of University Women] named me its "2010 Woman of Distinction". I am truly grateful for this honor and for the smiles and far too generous praise and applause of the people who attended. That honor, and that joyous day, renewed my sense of commitment to living a life of purpose, to reaching beyond my personal needs and wants in the most effective and efficient way possible.

But where and how to do that?

Here's where I'm starting. At the AAUW event a cherished friend, Bob Seltzer, described me as "20% Gloria Steinem, 20% Harriet Tubman, 20% Dr. Phil,20% Golda Meir, 20% Judah Macabee, and 20% Barak Obama!" [You'll have to ask Bob about the math. He can be reached at bob@jewishbytheshore.org.] It was a great complement, and set a new goal to strive to achieve. I know one thing for sure: what we do and say matters; the impact may be positive or negative; it may be large, medium or small, like the three bears of lore. But how we choose to spend our time on earth does have consequences. It's all about choices.

So my first choice was to learn about and do something I'd never done before.... start a blog. This is my first baby step.

On this blog I'll share information about events going on around town in which you may be interested, some of what I'm doing and learning, and once in a while a bit of what I'm thinking or feeling. [I promise --- no blow by blow descriptions of what I ate for breakfast, or spam jokes or stories from the internet!] And I invite you to do so as well. We can include upcoming events, information about a great book, a choice quote, a movie worth seeing, a link to a valued web site, and more.

We all lead such busy lives, so I'll totally understand if you chose not to sign on. But if you want to try out receiving this type of information for a while, please send an email to aggroch@gmail.com. If you change your mind you can unsubscribe at any time.
Thanks for taking your valuable time to read this.
Arlene