After almost seven years as Chief of the Petaluma Fire Department, Chris Albertson was honored at a farewell dinner, last night at the Lucchesi Park Community Center. This festive event included more stories and anecdotes about his career by friends and colleagues from as long ago as 40 years, than this blogger can report.

They say that a town's local newspaper captures the essence of a community with the "news" it reports. Well, when I checked the homepage for the online version - Petaluma360 - I found the five following stories under the heading, "Petaluma headlines."

This morning, while I was surfing the Internet, I came across a couple of my earlier bogs that caused the "old gray matter" to percolate. One blog dated 8-8-07 was titled, Old wine in a new bottle - or... is it 'new wine in an old bottle?' It starts off with a reference to Bill's Blog #34 from Thanksgiving - 2006 which focused on People coming together to -? The final sentence reads - maybe the time has come to step up to the plate, roll up their sleeves, mobilize the necessary resources, and raise a few more barns - together.

Did you miss the grand re-opening and 100 year celebration of Tomasini's Rex Ace Hardware and Country Store, yesterday?

Guess what's back on my radar screen? Citizen journalism! I was in the process of reading, "The rise and prospects of hyperlocal journalism" by Jan Schaffer, director of the Institute for Interactive Journalism's J-Lab in College Park, Maryland, at the same time I was discovering that many of the visitors to my Petaluma360 blog site, get there as the result of using a search engine rather than logging in with the site's official URL, http://www.petaluma360.com

Have you noticed the number of acronyms I use in my blogs? What do they stand for and what do they mean? Isn't the use of acronyms supposed to make it easier for readers to understand your references? Here's my Weblog's index of acronyms and their related community theme or topic. (There's an exam at the end of this blog.)