Meet Brenda.
Brenda Halverson has served on the Maple Street Homeowners Association Board since 1987. She has outlasted seven presidents, eleven treasurers, and a regional water-main replacement project that she personally lobbied against on the grounds of "insufficient community input."
She holds a certificate in Parliamentary Procedure (1991), a correspondence diploma in Landscape Aesthetics (1993), and a lapel pin from the North American Association of Neighborhood Associations (membership current).
She lives alone in a modest ranch at the corner of Maple and Elm with a Himalayan cat named Precedent. She writes her newsletters at a rolltop desk by the window, from which she can observe both the community mailbox and, if she leans slightly, the Hendersons.
Brenda's Pet Peeves
Dear Reader,
I did not set out to write a newsletter. In 1987 I volunteered to take minutes at a single meeting because Carol Mackenzie had "a thing." Carol never came back. The binder remained on my kitchen table. I made a pot of coffee and began.
Thirty-seven years later, I remain convinced that a community is simply the sum of the small things we agree to notice together. The flagpole. The curb. The petunias. The birthday of the Thompson boy. These are, it turns out, the whole point.
Warmly (and firmly),
— Brenda H., Board Secretary