“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today….”

to celebrate another Thanksgiving, and to give thanks for all we have. My simple list this year of what I am grateful for:

–my wonderful, loving family

–my good friends who bring joy and fun moments to my life

–my health so far (very important asset as we all age). Remember “Aging: if it’s not your issue, it will be”.

–the fact that I’ve now blogged 1183 posts online here, to inform and educate the community about what’s happening here in Tucson and Southern Arizona.

It’s been almost three/half years since I started up “Carolyn’s Community” on June 18, 2009. And it’s been mostly fun and rewarding. Glad we have competent veteran Tucson Citizen reporters Mark Evans (our Administrator) and Wildcat sports guru Anthony Gimino working for us at Tucsoncitizen.com.

Usually I ask everyone at a Thanksgiving dinner just to say one thing they are grateful for. If you would like to add a comment below about what you are thankful for, please do.

Happy Thanksgiving one and all.

Most of you online readers know by now that Site administrator/blogger Ryn Gargulinski resigned last Saturday, just prior to our staff/blogger holiday luncheon party at the Tucson Newspapers Inc. community room (4850 S. Park Avenue). Editor Mark Evans announced her resignation at the party and the hiring of Sports writer Anthony Gimino (“Anthony Gimino’s Wildcat Report”) as administrator of the Sports Network.

Read my previous blog (click here) about the December 4th holiday party (and fun was had by all).

Today there is a recap of these administrative changes and the future hiring of a part time Social Media Editor, to assist Mark and Anthony, in the Arizona Daily Star (page E2) by Phil Villareal:

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_b892b30a-81d7-5165-b6e4-52138df78fbf.html

Meanwhile, the site appears to be thriving. Evans said TucsonCitizen.com, which uses content from about 650 unpaid bloggers, had 520,000 unique visitors and 1 million page views in November, bettering the site’s monthly average of 400,000 monthly unique visitors in 2008 and the portion of 2009 before the print edition stopped publishing.

I think Villareal must have meant 65 (typo) as we don’t have as many as 650 bloggers online here. We did start off with only 7 bloggers back in June, 2009, after the Tucson Citizen newspaper published its last print edition on May 16, 2009.

Questions about these staff changes or information about blogging for this site should be directed to mevans@tucsoncitizen.com, or 520-573-4561.

Keep on thriving fellow bloggers/citizen journalists, and being “The Voice of Tucson”.

Twenty two of the Tucsoncitizen.com citizen journalists/bloggers attended a holiday thank you party today at the TNI community room at 4850 S. Park Ave. I’ll include a list of who was there later, but the party was hosted by Editor Mark Evans and his wife Lynn and daughter Rachel. Most of the main menu food/drinks/cake was supplied by Gannett Inc., with us volunteer writers contributing other pot luck dishes.

After an initial meet & greet (as many of us have never met), Mark talked about how our page views have almost doubled since January 2010, about staff changes with Anthony Gimino coming on as a Sports Network Administrator, and the resignation (today) of Co-editor Ryn Gargulinki, but the hiring of a new Social Media Editor in January. He wants to add more bloggers, more content, perhaps a new site design & features. Hopefully in the future, some of the blogsites will be generating revenue through advertisements. Mark also spoke of more community outreach through other local media, having a booth at the upcoming March 12 & 13 Tucson Festival of Books, and a booth at next December’s 4th Avenue Winter Street Fair in 2011.

Who attended this afternoon:
Anthony Gimino (Anthony Gimino’s Wildcat Report)
Sonja Taysom (Living Thin)
Peter Norback (One Can a Week)
Jonathan DuHamel (Wry Heat)
Carolyn Classen (Carolyn’s Community – me)
Cherlyn Strong (Paranormal Old Pueblo)
Linda Strader (Dry Heat Gardener)
Bonnie Lewis (Pour me Some Grapes)
Debbie Price (future photo blog)
Molly Thrasher (Tucson Bites)
Karyn Zoldan (From Market to Food Market)
Art Jacobson (The Data Port)
Kyle Arps (Bleed Red & Blue)
Denise Early (Medicare & More)
Charles Spillar (Artistic Tucson)
Larry Liascos aka Jimmy Petrol (Humor: Fueled by Petrol)
Penelope Starr (Telling Stories)
Karl Hoffman (Living on the Border)
Matt Minkus (The Matt Minkus Show)
Bjay Wooley (Tucson Tales)
Scott Terrell (UA Sports.net)
Pamela Powers (Tucson Progressive)

About 7 guests (spouses/partners/friends) also attended and enjoyed the luncheon.
Mark created a 10 question Tucson Citizen trivia contest, which was won by yours truly and 2nd place went to Cherlyn Strong. I won a lightly used Lumix camera (which I need), and Cherlyn won a gift certificate to Target. (If any of you are interested in what the questions were, comment below and I’ll let you know.)

Missed the rest of you who weren’t able to attend & party with us. The online Tucsoncitizen.com started off with 7 bloggers (along with Mark and Ryn) back on June 2, 2009, went up to 45 in January, 2010 and is now at 65 bloggers online! Keep writing everyone!

Happy Holidays from Tucsoncitizen.com.