Allow me to introduce to you a sad sack story of why, while triumph over all the destabilizing effects of small men in big jobs who take up causes rather than answer the question of what sort of people do we seek to be in the tangible, these same sure conclusions I have reached are not without the sand traps of a subversive element in our midst who must, even after all the years of this mission, and all the thousands of instances of face to face contact with myself or any number of our team where hands meet iron has resulted, paradoxically, with more foolish nonsense that sets our great reversal of fortunes back days, months or even years. To prove the point, this day, alone, and with nothing more than the most basic material supplies anyone could gather up from in their own home, I could gather 14 bags of garbage and other assorted nonsense from a specific location which has drawn away much manpower and time to maintain, thus depleting our ability to advance to the next, cleaned and weeded as one might expect when the maxim of simple tasks repeated often until perfect and repeatable by others is strictly adhered to, yet the humiliation that this trash did not arrive there on its own, and the wind could not possibly carry an electric heater or foam mattress, or pairs of underwear or bottle after bottle of whiskey, beer, soda or, energy drinks. Recognizing that inanimate objects which do not have the weight of paper or the buoyancy of a plastic bag must have, in fact been deposited by a person, unless feral cats have developed fingers and thumbs, this leads to the conclusion that it was people, maybe within our own neighborhood, maybe within our own circles, who determined to make our environment and our lives and this mission just a little bit more exacting on the tormented hearts and troubled souls, the fruits of todays labor do not take on the attributes of a triumph or forward progression in the minds of the many thousands required to eliminate this local source of pollution, and all the consequences that entails. It is also duly noted that one solitary man could accomplish this enormous cleaning and weeding operation in 5 hours, so we must by convention wonder what could be done with 10 able bodied men or women on any given Sunday or any random day when they attempt to carve out time for their community, indeed their nation, in selfless service that may not result in photo ops or newspaper headlines, like the verbal activists grovel over, but the earned respect of your people one by one. I have told many that when I see people, particularly the young, but they could just as well be elderly, in a gym running on a treadmill or across the broad spaces of Woodside, I ponder what if they could sacrifice to us that same energy for others at a local food pantry or writing a letter in support of an immigrant family in need or, maybe, pick up a broom and join your people. I have witnessed elderly well into their nineties performing the same things I do, but unfortunately I have not witnessed this here, but in a place called Japan. While our fully capable seniors disappear from public life; but I shall make no other assertions or draw any other conclusions, as I will leave this to you to decide the meaning behind this example. The garden restored, the trash readied for Sanitation pick up, the bleeding stopped for a moment, the stillness returns, and Providence again afforded another day to at the very least try to prevent this from occurring again anywhere free people gather. (11/16/14)
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 21:12:10 +0000
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