Members of the Portsmouth Tree Commission with Town Council members Jim Seveney (l) and Bill West(r).

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving — as you can tell, I took a few days off but wanted to catch up by posting this picture that was sent in of the Portsmouth Tree Commission which got together to plant several trees in the Redwood Farms Playground last weekend. As always, we should say thanks to this devoted group of volunteers for the work they have done to make Portsmouth an Arbor Day Foundation "Tree City." Trees provide beauty and shade, are powerful symbols of commitment to our rural character, and offer excellent carbon sequestration. How often do you get all that in one delightful package?

In other news, the RI Secretary of State's Web site seems to have finally recovered from the recent hacking episode, so the feed over there in the right column of upcoming meetings is working again. Monday night's Town Council will feature an update on the Wind Turbine project, and Tuesday's school committee will see discussion of a long-awaited update to the Portsmouth Middle School sound system (if any readers were at the Town Council budget hearing at PMS, you know just how badly needed that sound system upgrade is.)

Finally some administrative stuff. I know not everybody checks Web sites all the time, so did you know you can get notified by e-mail when there's a new post here at hard deadlines? If you create a username, you can choose to get an e-mail with just new content, or optionally be notified when there are new comments. To get e-mails, click on "my account" in the left-hand nav, then use the "my notification settings" tab to turn on notifications (click the "enabled" radio button). You can choose content and/or comments, with the buttons in "Detailed settings." Or if you prefer to get your news through a portal, you can add a feed from this site to your Google or Yahoo homepage through the links over in the "Feed me" section on the right. Any geeks who just want to grab the feed in their newsreaders can use the RSS badge to do that, of course.

Hope everyone had a relaxing long weekend, and a wonderful holiday with family and friends.