by Mike Markowitz, Dad of Sarah and member of The Price Center Board of Directors

Some thoughts while waiting for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to catch up with the science on vaccines and autism: the science has long told the world that vaccines don't cause autism.

-- We just learned that CEO Abby Parrilla and The Price Center has been named one of the Top 100 Women-Led Businesses in Massachusetts. The full list and rankings will appear in the November 1st, Women & Power edition of the Boston Globe Magazine. Abby is certainly #1 with us and we can't wait to see where she and The Price Center place on the Globe's list.

-- On almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, you'll find me at The Kindness Café, where our baristas-in-training make a genuinely great cup of coffee — better than mine, if I'm honest. You may remember the wonderful news a couple months ago that several of our baristas had accepted job offers in the community. We recently got the very disappointing update that complications unrelated to the baristas themselves derailed those hires. We're not discouraged. The baristas are still brewing and training and our employment team are still looking for the right opportunity to allow The Price Center's baristas to shine. In the meantime, come support the Café. You can do that by stopping in for coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and a pastry; booking the space for a small meeting; or sponsoring the Café by buying a brick for "Another Brick in the Wall" (details below). We've also got some interesting plans for the "Kindness Café After Dark." Stay tuned!

-- Big news on the solar front, too. Panels on The Price Center's roof, once installed, project to save us more than $2 million in energy costs over the next 20 years — savings that will go straight back into our programs. We've been pursuing two grants to fund the project, which also includes replacing our headquarters roof: a generous private foundation grant, and a Low-Income Solar System Project (LISSP) grant from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, aimed at bringing solar directly to organizations like ours. We've already received the private grant. The DOER deferred our LISSP application and is waiting on additional funding from the state and asking us for more detail on our financial plan — details we're now supplying. More to come.

-- And then there were The Price Center's Summer Fun Days — held indoors because of rain on July 29th, and outside on sunny August 5th. It was a blast both inside and out. Attendees played cornhole, ladder toss, and bowled, inaugurating our new pinsetter and the bowling alley. Outside, things got appropriately soggy with water balloons and squirters. Everyone had a great time, and a few of us are still finding water balloon pieces in odd places.

Please accept my invitation to come by The Kindness Café. The coffee's good and the atmosphere is even better.

mmarkowitz@thepricecenter.org