By Staff
It's almost over…the holidays, I mean.
This year's season was a good one for me. Still, I'm happy that life and work are about to return to normal. We've had some kind of goodies or treats in our office every day since the first of November and I'm really glad that's about to end. One good holiday season can destroy a year's worth of dieting effort.
I hope your holiday was a good one. I enjoyed a quiet season in Niles this year. While I love my family and miss spending time with them, I took the year off and stayed in Niles for Christmas. I spent the time with good friends here, which was wonderful. My niece is getting married in my hometown in April, and my mother was up here for a visit last summer, so I was able to justify staying home this year. However, my mother has informed me that I shouldn't make it a habit.
Nonetheless, it was great not having to fight the security lines in airports and car rental places or having to divide my time up between the homes of family members scattered the 90 miles between Baton Rouge, La., and Natchez, Miss.
It was a good year at Leader Publications and I'm thankful for the people who work with me here. We're growing by leaps and bounds and creating new jobs while doing so. We increased the delivery area of The Leader this year, adding more households in Granger, Ind., Clay Township and in Three Oaks. The combined circulation of all of our products now tops 50,000. I'm pretty proud of that.
We have lots of work to do this year, too, and are in full Horizons production mode. Horizons, our annual community yearbook, will publish this year in the Niles Daily Star, Dowagiac Daily News, Cassopolis Vigilant and Edwardsburg Argus the week of Feb. 19 through 23. We launched work on the project in early October. I think you'll be pleased with this year's end result.
In just a few weeks, we'll welcome our new neighbors, Chemical Bank, when they open their new facility on Main Street between Fourth and Fifth streets.
The building is very attractive and certainly changes the face of downtown Niles. We're looking forward to Tom Grant and his staff moving in next door.
It has also made very visible the most unattractive part of our building, which was hidden for many years. We plan some aesthetic changes to our building in early spring. Nothing major, just some powerwashing and paint.
We so enjoyed witnessing the construction project. We took weekly photos of the progress on the building and will share some of those photos with you in a special edition that will publish in early January.