We love our hometown!

The people are kind. Neighbors are helpful. We have fantastic farm-to-table restaurants, a brewery and, even a neighborhood joint with Bingo. We have great retail, a grocery store, and friendly family-run service providers. Police and fire departments that work really hard, and saved my husband’s life two years ago.

And it’s a fun place. We sit on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, have a biggish lakefront park with a new music pavilion. Every year we have little and big events that make our little city a haven for visitors, who consistently say, “I love this little town”.

Our little slice of heaven was founded in 1852. My home was built in 1905. And today we boast about 2300 residents. My dad always said Excelsior was like Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show.

Like many people, the pandemic has been hard on our community. The people and the businesses. Excelsior is no different. The community banded together the best we could and took care of each other, because that is what you do in a small town.

My husband and I spend a lot of time in New York City. One day on the way to our son’s apartment, we passed a huge plaque as we headed into the tunnel towards Brooklyn. It read “New York City – Excelsior”. I was like – What the What?

Turns out the New York State Motto is Excelsior, which is a Latin word meaning “ever upward” or “still higher.” It was also Marvel Universe genius Stan Lee’s personal motto – he signed most of his monthly newsletters and important letters “Excelsior! Stan Lee”.

So as I think about my little hometown and other 19,495 incorporated cities, towns and villages in the United States (thanks Google for the fact) we need to stay focused on ever upward. Alone we fall, but together we go still higher.

What does this mean friends, ever upward? It means to keep our communities solid and growing – we must put our money where home is and keep shopping local, keep playing local and keep building businesses locally.

Excelsior!

Ahhh, I think I will stick with my motto, Be Your Own JoyMaster. Xoxoxo Lisa

PS: The picture for this post is my grandsons at The Commons in Excelsior. On this day, we walked to get Donuts, dilly-dallied on the old train tracks in hopes of seeing the trolley, picked up books at the library, had taco’s at Lago Taco’s and picked out groceries at Kowolski’s for dinner. Stopped at home and then we walked to the beach, played pickleball and got ice cream cones from Tommy’s Trolley. Then swam at sunset to get all the Ice Cream off the boys bodies from Tommy’s Trolley. It was a great day.