As American holidays go, Thanksgiving is right up there as one of the most important.  It is a time for families to gather and give thanks for the many blessings we enjoy.

No matter how bad things can be, you can still make a list of what you have in your life for which you can be thankful.  I have had some very low points in my life, but at this time of year, I always thought about what was still good.

Today, I am thankful for my family and friends.  I am thankful for my good health.

But today I want to thank a specific group of people….all of you reading this news blog and listening to my podcasts.  This endeavor has expanded beyond anything I could ever imagine when it all began.

When I retired from the federal government after 28 years of civilian service, I saw troubling trends in the profession where I made my living before entering the civil service.

The changes in the economics of the news business had left many local communities without regular, daily news.  While living in Fishers, I subscribed to the Noblesville Daily Ledger, which covered news in Noblesville, Carmel and Fishers.  I knew what was going on locally from that news source 6 days a week.

The Ledger was sold and eventually closed down after more that 100 years.  That was a signal things were changing.

Once I retired from federal employment in September of 2011, I made plans to work on some way of filling the news gap for people living in my community of Fishers. By January of 2012, I had put together a simple Web page and began publishing news around Fishers.  I started attending town council meetings and wrote summaries of what I witnessed.

I was fortunate to have had some experience in covering events and writing news stories, knowing that those skills were more than a little rusty.  I was a bit superstitious at first by not installing a counter on the site.  I had no idea whether anyone was reading my material.

Then people would approach me at the council meetings, giving me an idea someone was actually reading LarryInFishers.com.  I finally started monitoring the traffic on my site, and found that, for a locally focused news site, I was getting a decent number of readers

I have been writing about local issues on LarryInFishers.com for nearly five years now.  Since starting the site in early 2012, I have done more writing.  I contribute occasional commentaries for Current In Fishers, a local weekly print publication.  I have done some writing for the Indianapolis Business Journal and write commentaries for their online opinion blog, Indiana Forefront.

In February of 2016, I began a series of podcasts.  The listening audience has surpassed any expectations I had at that time.

This has always been, and continues to be, a volunteer activity for me.  I do this simply because the news business has changed and no one else is in a position to do this.  People in Fishers want daily updates on news happening here.

So here is what I give special thanks for this Thanksgiving in 2016.  I thank you for reading this news blog.  I thank you for listening to my podcasts.  You are what makes this work worthwhile for me.  As long as my health is good and I am able to continue, the LarryInFishers news blog will continue, assuming I have  readers and listeners.

So, thanks to all of you this Thanksgiving Day.