Thank you to all who make my job as the Badin Villager editor a pleasure. Special thanks to the Town Hall staff for their patience, editing and fact-checking skills. Thanks, also to the museum staff for their patience. And many thanks to the readers and their encouraging remarks about this small attempt to provide our community with local news. Happy New Year! Bridget Huckabee, Editor

It’s good to see the activity at the former Alcoa Badin Works, now named the Badin Business Park. Let’s hope there’ll be more activity in the near future. And talking of activity, we encourage the community to turn out for Badin’s Old Fashioned Christmas celebration featured in the above article. Badin volunteers work hard at events like this and in these challenging times it’s good for the town to gather together to celebrate our spirit of community.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Bridget Huckabee

Editor

September’s Best of Badin Festival is a big draw for old Badinites and others with family ties to this small town. Carol Preisinger, mentioned above, is a good example. Many others visit the town, making brief nostalgic stops. A couple from France visited the Cottage House recently. His father once owned a furniture store here and he brought his French wife to see the town with the French ties. Alcoans far and wide have fond memories of their working years here and the Museum’s membership list shows how wide Badin’s reach is. Bridget Huckabee Editor

Visitors to Badin are always amazed at how such a small band of volunteers does so much for the town. From putting on a two-day festival that attracts thousands, to creating, and staffing three museums, to planting and watering a string of large flower pots along the main street, to picking up trash around town, this small but dedicated band deserves our thanks. Let’s repay them by taking pride in our own little plots and streets and parks. And when you meet a volunteer, stop and shake his or her hand and say, “Thank you.” Bridget Huckabee Editor

Thanks to the efforts of Anne and Bill Harwood, the entrance to Badin no longer proclaims us as a sewer plant community. Named for a native North American species known for its toughness, the newly named Ironwood Drive is appropriate for our tough little town and a good choice for a community with golfing associations. Thanks, Anne and Bill.

Bridget Huckabee Editor

It’s a simple concept: you pay taxes, the town provides services. One of these services is the monthly Limbs/Brush Pick-up on the first Tuesday of every month. Put your limbs and brush out on the curb up to a week beforehand, but preferably the night before or the morning of that Tuesday so the streets aren’t cluttered for days on end and the refuse washed into storm drains in the event of a storm. Some residents have a hard time following this simple rule, making more work for the maintenance department to clean out storm drains and gutters, straining the town’s budget, diluting the services your taxes pay for and cluttering sidewalks and streets. First Tuesday. Got it?

Bridget Huckabee Editor

Lorraine Tucker, Badin Town Clerk, has served this community for 18 years although it took the town 12 years to bestow the title of Town Clerk on her. I’ve known her for 16 of those 18 years and have come to rely on her copy editing skills, her knowledge of Badin and her unfailing good humor. I take her the monthly Villager before I print it and she goes over it with a fine tooth comb, correcting typos and adding missing punctuation. Since I’m English, and even though we supposedly speak the same language, she often has to act as my translator, quick to pick up on my English idioms and tell me when my Badin readership won’t know what I’m talking about. These are some of the many small chores and favors she does voluntarily. She also does far more than run the Town Hall Office where she copes with payroll, minutes of meetings, taxes and insurance and all the other chores that go with running a business. She has trained a succession of Town Managers, keeps track of the whereabouts of the police and the Mayor and knows who to contact for any problem she can’t solve herself. She un-jams complex office machines, makes coffee, waters the plants and keeps the place neat and tidy. And she’s the town receptionist and visitor’s bureau rolled into one. Lorraine retires on February 28, 2011. I count her as a friend and will miss her daily presence at the Town Hall more than I can say. I know we all wish her the very best in her retirement.

In the last few weeks the Villager’s website and blog, www.visitbadin.com, has had comments posted from Pakistan, France and Australia.

Scott from Australia writes: Hi, I feel for your quaint little town. I work at an Alcoa site in Australia and I often wonder about what my town (Mandurah) would be like when the refinery inevitably closes down. All the best for the future and I hope that it is rosy. Badin Betrand from France writes: Bonjour. Votre ville est très joli et porte le même nom que moi je ne connaissais pas du tout. Un petit bonjour a tous les habitants de BADIN cordialement. Waheed Lakho from Pakistanwrites: Wow its nice to see Badin city. I am amazed to see development in this area. But in our city Badin in Sindh Pakistan, there are no such infrastructures and facilities. Both cities have same names but their fate is totally change.

These are just three who have left comments. Makes one wonder how many find us and don’t leave comments. It’s a small world.

Bridget Huckabee, Editor

Better Badin, one of the most enduring and successful groups in Badin, is in need of a little tender loving care. Meetings are overly-long, loosely run, and sometimes verging on chaotic. It has become increasingly hard to find willing leadership. In the old days…OK, so I’m showing my age…Elvin Fisher ran meetings with an iron fist in a velvet glove. He delegated. He expected results and for the most part he got them. David Summerlin ran the festival, delegated, expected and got results from his hard-working crew. At every meeting, Jim Harrison sat in the back row, but his leadership was as important as Fisher’s and Summerlin’s. Meetings were run using Robert’s Rules of Order. They were short and they were productive. That, in my humble opinion, is the only way to run a meeting. Better Badin is vital to Badin’s future. Let’s get it back on track. Bridget Huckabee, Editor

We have a saying where I come from: “An Englishman’s home is his castle.”  And so it is in America. No one can enter your home without permission except in extreme cases, and this includes a code enforcement officer. If violations are visible from the outside of a property, that’s a different matter. But inside violations can go dangerously undetected if renters or owners refuse to allow inspection when it is obvious there are safety issues. In my neighborhood, a departing renter allowed an inspection of his townhouse after the landlord refused to fix myriad problems. The inspector found three pages of violations and the property was closed until the problems were fixed. If you think you have safety issues, call the Town Hall. With your permission an inspection can be scheduled to see if you have a problem. 

Bridget Huckabee, Editor