At Groktober Fest (held last October), I had a bit of time to do a few micro-interviews, so our Master-of-Ceremonies, Jeff Chidester, just HAD to be one of them. As soon as he saw me stepping towards him, he knew he was nabbed!
So it was easy to ask him the single question as well: “What is the most important thing that GraniteGrok has brought to NH?”
And he politely gave a studied and measured response:
I hope that, over the next 18 years, we will continue to uphold those kind words. After all, who else is doing what we do? Many have tried in the past, and we have outlasted them all (and some were very well financed, to boot); it shows what ordinary people can do when motivated to do so over the long haul.
Again, as a reminder, I announced my semi-retirement from GraniteGrok due to the heightened needs of my family. And yes, again, I was surprised as the words came out of my mouth (surprising to me – I didn’t even know I was going to do it!) from the ‘Grok I had founded 18 years ago due to family issues that HAD to take priority. And in doing so, I turned over everything over to Steve knowing that it would be in the best of hands – I was not disappointed.
Sidenote: And that is the reason why I am taking this opportunity to ask you to donate to GraniteGrok. We are all volunteers, but with Steve’s full-time job gone away, this is the opportunity to keep him and all the time he puts in with his wit, wisdom, and dry humor full-time in a paying position. We were lucky with his old job – nooks and crannies of time always showed up, and he spent it spinning up post after post. However, if he has to look for another full-time job, there’s no guarantee that he’d have the same amount of time for you all to enjoy.
Now that things have calmed down, I can resume making a political PA of myself to those who need it (yes, a warning). And I will continue to post some of the interviews from “Groktober Fest.”
