It’s the most wonderful — and the busiest — time of the year!

• Here we are in the heart of the Holiday Season.

I hope you’re getting enough rest between the busy days. I know I’ll need to be careful myself to keep my things in balance because the next eight days are, by sheer happenstance, the busiest of my year.

Tonight I will be at Burrillville High School to record the music department’s annual Holiday Concert there. I have five TV shows to record for a commercial customer tomorrow evening, then Thursday I’ll be at Woonsocket High School to record the Holiday Concert there. I’ll be up to my neck in editing on Friday and Saturday, then Sunday afternoon it’s off to Mount St. Charles to record their concert. Finally, our friends in North Smithfield have figured out what to do about their auditorium’s capacity problem. With so many students in their music program and a very nice auditorium which just isn’t big enough to hold everyone at once, they’ve decided to cut the concert into two halves and have one on Monday night and the second on Tuesday night. I hope that works out for them, but it means two nights out for me and my crew to record them instead of just one.

Add to this our daily Milk Fund Radio Auction each morning, and the usual business of the day and I’ll likely be meeting myself in the hall coming back the other way!

After that there’s all the editing of all the shows to get them ready for the radio and TV broadcast on Christmas Day.

But let me tell you, I love it!

Watching the concerts, seeing the students, and seeing how excited they get when they and their families and friends watch the concert or listen to them being broadcast makes all the work completely worth it and brings me a satisfaction I cannot describe.

• I received a number of agreeable comments on my praise in these pages for those who continue to work hard to make our city a better place and who have never given up on making our downtown area the best it can be. I also received one very scolding and harsh comment telling me I am a fool for not recognizing that “all Main Streets are dead and they’re never coming back.” This reader was either so convinced or so dedicated to convincing me of what he said that he repeated the thought over and over. While I do appreciate hearing from everybody, I’m not buying what he is selling.

I think we should take an example from those who live everyday with physical handicaps. They may have parts which don’t work, or are missing. There’s nothing they can do about what they can do except to concentrate on CAN what they still do. They work hard to make their lives as useful to themselves and others as they can under the circumstances they face. We admire them for that, and I think we should do no less for our downtown areas.

True, they’ll probably never be the center of commerce they once were, the circumstances which made them that way no longer exist in the present CAN day and age. But they be trans- formed into something else which is useful. And They Are! They are working very hard to build something useful out of what we have there. I think we should all help these public-spirited citizens, but if we cannot physically help them, then the least we can all do is to not talk against their efforts. Words can be a power tool for building and support or they can be a powerful weapon for destruction. Let’s be thoughtful about how we use them!

And while I’m here, I think I’d be remiss if I failed to remind everyone of the dangers presented by social media this holiday season. It is natural to have disagreements with people. However, we must remember that a word spoken (or written in social media) can hurt someone badly. We must never post to social media when we are angry or hurt.

Calm down, take a deep breath, and above all... read what you wrote BEFORE

you press the button to post! Think of how you would feel if the YOU. words you wrote were about You may still post that comment tomorrow, but at least you’d have been careful and deliberate in your actions. Mistake or no mistake as it may be, please give yourself a chance to calm down before taking actions you may later regret.

That’s what I think. What do you think? Comments to: dave@onworldwide.com or postal mail to Dave Richards, WOON Radio, 985 Park Avenue, Woonsocket, RI 02895-6332.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for remembering The Milk Fund.