The email last night that put me into respiratory arrest began,

Your site has been added to http://water.alltop.com/

If you’re not familiar with AllTop, it was launched last year by Guy Kawasaki; it aggregates scores of  RSS feeds on one single topic into a clean, easy page, grouped by site and displaying the 5 most current headlines for each site. Your site gets reviewed before it is included, and upon inclusion gets aggregated onto this “digital magazine rack.” This spares readers of having to fiddle with RSS feeds, while still getting fresh updates on their topic of choice.

So how did I land myself in such esteemed company? Not by myself! I definitely had some help! This is where “The Good New Days” part comes in.

Have you ever caught yourself disillusioned and thinking, whatever happened to the “good old days,” when community meant something? When neighbors helped neighbors? When both strangers and friends extended a helping hand, with no expectation of anything, without being asked, and gratitude as their only reward?

The answer is, nothing happened to it. Here in the ‘Net community, it was those very gestures that landed Thirsty in Suburbia on AllTop. Thanks, Thanks, Thanks, Dr. Michael “Aquadoc” Campana of WaterWired, The Institute for Water and Watersheds, American Water Resources Assocation (AWRA), and a host of other places where super-smart water people gather. Although we’ve never met, he was a “neighbor” who repeatedly helped me with no expectation of benefit to himself. It is people like him that make these the Good NEW Days and the ‘Net a place where community still means something. And I am so very grateful.

Now, regular readers of WaterWired know that A-Doc closes his posts with a quote. So in his honor, I impart some words of wisdom for him:

“Watch out who you’re hanging around with! Don’t you know you’re judged by the company you keep?” –Anonymous