A local fellow came in this week to sign up for the Caribou City-Wide Yard Sale this week and I told him that he looked very familiar and I suddenly realized that it sounded like I was trying to pick him up. We both had a good laugh over that one. Anyway, the week featured lots of folks coming in to sign up for the big yard sale event. The deadline is April 23, so if you plan on running a sale, please come on in.
The office here at the Nylander Building will be open from 9 a.m. until noon on Saturday, April 20th for those of you who have a hard time getting here during the week days.
Other than the yard sale visits, it was pretty much a quiet week of planning and dreaming here at the office. One of the things I have really enjoyed lately are Mayor Gary Aiken’s columns in the Republican. He is a straight shooter and has a logical way of breaking things down so they can be understood. One touch I really like is his ending of, “What have you done for Caribou lately?”
Such a question brings me back to the heady days of Camelot when John F. Kennedy asked us not to ask what the country to do for us, but what we could do for the country. Those are important questions that really deserve some thought.
I was talking to the president of one of our local organizations and this person has a hundred members in his organization and of the hundred, perhaps seven come to a meeting and three may help when needed. Why has it come to this? To be honest, I am part of the problem. I put my full energy into my job and when I go home, I want to stay home. But my parents did not do that.
My parents belonged to service organizations when I was young and I stumbled on a few of the old articles my mom had in a scrapbook from something or other where the two of them were officers. Plus, my Dad was in the VFW and did a lot through that organization. So why am I so un-civic minded? It is not like I do not have the time.
Oh, I say I am busy. But how many hours a week do I play with my computerized jigsaw puzzle program? How busy am I really? How many hours do I spend in front of the television? And before that, I had children underfoot. But what did our parents do when we were children? We were either babysat or we tagged along.
I was thinking of Deb Sirois the other day. Here is a gal about my age who works two jobs, one at OfficeMax and the other at Sleepers. And yet, she is everywhere. She is there at the polls during the elections and handing out desserts and town functions. She is a special kind of volunteer who never seems to tire of it. Why are not more of us like her?
My second home during the summer months is the Caribou Country Club. I love it there. I was once a president of the board there. But whenever a call comes for a clean-up day in the spring, the same five to seven people show up every year. There are a lot more members than that. I am not usually one of those five to seven people. So what is my excuse? Well, I have a bad back and bad knees and am grossly out of shape. But that does not stop me from gardening in my own yard.
And for a while I created some sort of stupid grudge because at one time I did donate several trees at a pretty penny and planted them. One of them was snapped in half by a rutting moose who was saying to some pretty female moose, “Hey baby, look what I can do.” Crunch. Another died from neglect. How dare they not take care of and replace my trees. Pretty silly right?
So what are some of the reasons that hold us back from giving more of our time? Well, more couples have both partners working these days than in the past and people have multiple jobs to survive. so home time is more valued and protected. Many of us do not teach our children civic duty or model it in our own lives. I can lay claim to both areas of guilt there. Our electronic age has instilled in us this concept that life is sped up and complicated. Service clubs have died out or dwindled.
How about this for a thought: Many times when someone is convicted of a crime these days, one popular punishment is community service. Think about that for a second. I will wait. Thought about it? Yeah, exactly — community service is a punishment. How messed up is that?
I know that our local school systems try. Community service is a built into part of the curriculum and necessary to graduate. But do we ever hear about how our high school kids spend that service and what they do? Not often. Perhaps that should be publicized more as a positive reinforcement and for inspiration.
The loss of valuable volunteer time is also expensive. What we do not do in volunteer time has to be paid to someone who will do it for a price. My tax dollars are spent that way and so are yours. The poor and the hungry used to be taken care of by the goodness of the people in our communities. Now we expect the government to do it. In many areas, our taxes are now being spent to perform duties that used to be done by community service.
Please do not misunderstand me and where I am coming from. I understand that I am just as much a part of the problem and also understand that many people in our city give lots of their time and their energy each year to causes outside of themselves. Many of our business leaders are our most tireless volunteers and others who give so much of their time and efforts back to the community and terrific things have been accomplished.
But what is also important to state is that these faithful people get used up and they get tired. More of us need to catch their vision. Imagine if you will, a pool of a hundred, two hundred or more people who would be willing to give an hour or two or three each month to something. Imagine such an army being organized centrally so that requests could be made and people rallied.
I do not know what the answer is. What I do know is that I am part of the problem and in the words of the song, need to look at the man in the mirror. Just imagine if me and an army of people like me could be energized to give back to the community just a couple of hours a month. Just imagine what we could do.
Executive Director William Tasker may be reached in the CACC office at 498-6156 or e-mail him at cacc@cariboumaine.net.
