Opinion - Oct. 1, 2009

Different responses to community needs

Hullabaloo in Colfax will ring in this weekend. Activities are planned for Friday and Saturday.

Last weekend, volunteers roamed downtown cleaning Main Street with brooms and hoses, hoping to brighten up the town for visitors.

Prior to that, volunteers set up fall decorations on street corners, and some of the flower baskets still adorn the street.

These and any other community volunteer activities require time, energy and commitment. They require the willingness to try to make things better, even down to slivers on slides at the park.

All small communities need community volunteers who sacrifice, with or without wide-spread help and support.

Small communities are also faced with those who contribute only negatives. Some people, regardless of what is being done, will complain and bicker and obfuscate. Not only do many of these miss the point of what is being done, they also help to kill the spirit of volunteerism.

The Thrifty Grandmothers shop, for instance, has been the subject of a lot of comment. The Grandmothers raise money in their shop by selling donated items at very low prices. Then, they donate what they make back to the community. They are important to the area for what they sell and for what they donate.

The group has difficulty keeping up with the flow of “donations” that flood the back of its shop. Most of the leavings are appropriate and suitable for resale. A good portion, however, is just junk-- trash that people do not want to pay the garbage man to haul off. Thus, it ends up at the Grandmothers shop where volunteers and helpers are forced to dispose of it.

This is bad enough and has been a continuous problem for the Grandmothers, but now they are being criticized for not taking care of their “donations.”

One such criticism came last week in the Pet Peeves. Another Peeve was received this week.

It reads: "Residents on the west hill have a disgusting view of the dumpster and the overflow behind the Grandmothers Shop."

Sure enough, sometimes it is a mess. Sometimes they are overwhelmed by the junk and garbage that comes their way. They need help to manage this problem.

Finding slivers in a public park slide or complaining about a ration of donations that flows into the alley is one kind of response to civic needs. Another might be to get permission to sand the slide or to offer a few hours to help catch up at the Grandmothers Shop.

So far, anyway, nobody has yet complained about the decorations on Main Street.

Gordon Forgey

Publisher