Thank you City of Palo Alto for National Night Out and the opportunity to strengthen neighborhood and police partnerships. For our neighborhood, it provided the perfect catalyst for a memory-making event.

In Tuesday evening’s twilight, with the glow of paper lanterns and 78’s of “Oklahoma” playing on a hand-cranked Victor Victrola, nearly fifty adults and children on Stelling Drive gathered for a dessert social. Representatives from the Palo Alto police and fire departments and utilities’ recycling program came by loaded with treats - junior Fire and Police badges, coffee mugs, recycling games and posters, pamphlets and brochures - and shared information while enjoying the delicious bounty which included: Anna Forbes’ sugar free banana oatmeal raisin cookies, Kathryn Molitor’s double chocolate sprinke cupcakes and berries fresh off the Marcum family’s vine.

And a huge thank you goes to co-organizers Maria Lam and Elena Smith, aided by Daniel Loran who distributed all the flyers and Mara Smith who helped with clean up.

I’m so glad Stelling Drive’s residents took advantage of this opportunity for our neighborhood to reconnect. How nice it was to hear neighbors as they walked home saying they’d had such a wonderful time and talking about plans to do it again, soon!