Tonight I am feeling fat and happy. The fat part isn’t a metaphor. Aruba is a land of many fantastic restaurants.

But of course, the best part of the One Happy Island is the weather. It’s warm and windy.

I used some of the time in the sun to work on planning business strategy for the coming year. I can’t plan the real news but I can plot out the projects the Milton Times will execute in 2012. I used other time to improve my vitamin D absorption.

My brain turned to mush during the week. One of the major projects the Milton Times is planning in 2012 is The 350th - A Celebration. The project has two parts. The first is a supplement that will focus on Milton history. The second part will concentrate on photos of the celebration.

I like the man she’s marrying. Her two children like him too.

So all the world is right.

This week we shopped for her wedding gown. She will make a beautiful bride - and the wedding will be designed to fit her hopes and dreams.

I married once myself - but I didn’t have the chance to design my dream wedding. It was fun anyway. But it was really my mother’s design. She didn’t have a big wedding herself since she and my father decided to marry right after he was drafted during World War II.

My daughter has been planning this wedding for more than a year now. It will be lovely. I wish I could post a photo of June trying on The Dress - but the future groom as internet access and we don’t want him glimpsing the dress before the big day.

It surprised me that Hollywood was months ahead of the Occupy Movement in calling out Wall Street.

It defined a class war worth the battle.

Hard to believe this film actually was conceived in 2005 and shot a year ago. Who knew how popular it would be to trash stockbrokers in 2005?

I enjoyed the political humor.

Loved the initiative on the part of the service workers .

It was this time a year ago when I began to cope with a diagnosis of cancer.

They tell me I’m cancer free right now. But every morning I swallow a small white pill that my oncologist prescribed to block estrogen from being absorbed in my body.

I have been led to believe the small white pill protects me from ill health.

Yet I don’t seem to find comfort in the tiny pill. And every day it reminds me that my body made a space for cancer. It did that without my permission.

When I began coping with the diagnosis, I floated in denial for quite some time.

I thought about what I needed to do to rid myself of the evil cells. And I moved through each of the steps to eradicate the disease.

My cancer was discovered through my regular mammogram. At first I was sure nothing was wrong except the radiologist’s eyes. And so I scheduled a second opinion.

Moving through those nights and days, I tried not to think about worse case scenarios. And yet I contacted a newspaper broker as I thought about what might happen.

The reason I chose a bilateral mastectomy is that I never wanted to experience this sense of helplessness again.

It was a good choice. The pathologists at Faulkner Hospital found tiny cancer cells in the breast was hadn’t shown problems.

As my oncologist said, the second cancer was so small, it might not have ever become what he called a “real cancer.” One of those was enough for me.

Breast cancer affected my grandmother and aunt. It’s shadow has always touched my memories.

And now I have my own experience and I’ve moved from denial, anger and compromise into acceptance. I know I skipped the depression stage. Perhaps I am just starting to experience that part.

I haven’t wanted to think about my cancer. And yet there it is every day as  I look in the mirror and notice that my body is shaped like a plump pear. I think about escaping cancer as I swallow the estrogen-blocking pill. I haven’t had any trouble remembering to take the pill, unlike my cholestrol drug.

I think about cancer as I move through the food market, purchasing only organic foods, avoiding water in plastic bottles.

My cancer, which has been cut out of my body, defines much of what I do these days.

I sit and watch the water flow by the windows of my life. I smile with friends. I sleep more. I plan to continue flooding my life with joy and beauty.

It seems to be time to move beyond thinking about cancer. It is time to move back into life. I want to erase the dis-ease. But the truth is I am grateful cancer came and brought me the realization I am a time-limited being. I need to make the most of all the minutes.

The event began 18 years ago as a celebration of the community - its spirit - its diversity.

George Welles, former pastor of the Church of Our Saviour, and I will both receive Lifetime Achievement Awards from the organization.

It humbles me to prepare for this honor.

In 1997 I won a community builder award which proudly hangs on my office wall at the Milton Times.

The paper was young back then and I was much younger than I am today.

My daughter, June, had nominated me and I was thrilled to know she wasn’t upset about the long hours she was working to help the paper grow. 1997 was a good year for my whole family. My son graduated from Milton High. My daughter had her first child, Hayley Bradford. And I joined a small group of Milton people called community builders.

I was living on Willoughby Road that year and I spent most of my days and nights connecting with people in the community.

Building a weekly newspaper is all about helping the community find its voice.

The town of Milton has a strong and vibrant voice.

I continue to enjoy being part of the community. And I am grateful for all the community provides.

This week I began the process of leaving AOL.

You see I’ve been paying money to AOL for a very long time. And my own email address as well as several at my paper have been connected to the “You’ve Got Mail” people.

But more than a year ago AOL began financing a website that competes with the Milton Times website. Not that they are making inroads in the Milton market. The good news is www.miltontimes.com is generating more unique visitors than ever.

So my new email address is themiltontimes@gmail.com. Ofcourse, I’ve been using pat.desmond@miltontimes.com for several years now but almost no one ever emails me there.

I know why people use the AOL address - it’s easy to remember. I’m thinking I need to begin promoting the one with my name. It should only take about six months to make the transition.

I just have to print a batch of new business cards and run a few dozen ads in my own paper. Oh, yes and I’m planning to use a page in the Milton Phone Book to promote all the various emails and telephone extenstion at the Milton Times.

I’ve had my Ipad for six months now - I use it to check email, read books on planes and play solitaire.

I am addicted to solitaire these days.

But writing, unless I use the Notes app, is tricky. The cursor doesn’t move from one field to another the way I expect.

Checking my email is simple. But I do need a laptop to write.

We began getting calls from subscribers early in the afternoon of the 28th. One after another asked whether there was a problem with his or her subscription. After a number of these calls, I phoned across the street  to the post office, asking for Amy Carter, manager of the Milton office.

Although I couldn’t reach her, I discovered that no one would get the paper that day because the entire delivery had been sent to visit Boston.

Personally I think this is part of a scheme to encourage newspapers to find alternate methods of delivery and decrease the mail volume to a greater degree.

In case you haven’t received a piece of mangled mail lately, let me tell you: It’s on the way.

The post office has spent millions (or billions) of dollars on new machines - called FSS machines - that are supposed to sort the mail.

The Milton Times has been delivered on Thursdays to mailboxes in Milton for the past 15 years. When we began 16 years ago, the newspaper was mailed with a bulk imprint.

But within a few months we began the process of qualifying for a periodical permit (it was called second class back in those days.) We kept documentation of every dollar received for a subscription and filed all the forms.

The reason we worked to meet the mailing requirements is that periodicals are supposed to be treated with priority and delivered quickly.Those were the days my friend, I hoped they would never end.Back in the early days of the Times existence, my son (who was in high school) would pick up the copies of the newspaper several hours after we went to press. Then he and I and anyone else I could rope into the work crew would label the mail copies and sort into bags by carrier route.

I might have given Christina Ferrera a little more credit. She was chosen to deliver an address at Fontbonne’s graduation not just for her academic achievement but for her character, spirituality and contribution to the community.

A community paper needs to explain what is right in the town and we agree with Christina who quoted Mahatma Gandhi in her address: “Be the change you want to see in this world.”

While I was in Newport, RI, with the rest of the National Newspaper Association board of directors, I learned a few good ideas.

One idea is a column written by Mary Fisher in Arkansas - a column on community history that I’m thinking about adding to our regular table of contents.

The time I spend with the NNA board helps me focus on how the newspaper industry is changing across the country.

All of the other directors are coping with the need to deliver the news their communities have come to count on while coping with budgets that reflect a troubled economy.

Because NNA markets to community newspapers, these industry leaders have solutions that work in Milton.

So I came back from Newport, having toured the grass courts of the Tennis Hall of Fame and ridden a small craft into the choppy waves of Newport Harbor and so much more so that I could take photos at the All Night Party for the MHS Class of 2011.

The All Night Party is one of my favorite photo ops of any year.

You can find the photos I captured on the Milton Times web site. There’s a link to photos. I will place the new pictures as our featured gallery as soon as I crop the pictures to eliminate stray party goers who wandered into my frames.