Tag Archives: community

reunion

14 Friday Aug 2009

Posted by in seasons

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I’m getting ready to attend my 26th high school class reunion.  Year 25 zipped right by without a party but I am not complaining.  I do hereby decree that anyone that complains about this unconventional reunion year is automatically assigned to the 30th (or 31st) reunion committee.  I’ve never done the planning for a high school reunion (only the grade school ones, but that is another story), and I can only guess it is a fair amount of work to track down all those former students.

Note to self:  thank the committee this weekend.

A 26th reunion seems like a better idea anyway.  The 25th anniversary of anything carries a silver plated set of expectations, like the memories from the event need to be nice and shiny after it is done.  26?  It is a cottony kind of year, nothing fancy.  And indeed, this one is a outdoor picnic kind of night, which sounds just right to me.

It was the location of the reunion that sealed the deal for me to make the trip back.  That and some facebook friends.  It will be held in the little unincorporated town where I grew up (estimated population 300), not the bigger town where the high school was located (pop. 2500), or the bigger town where some large events like weddings take place (pop. 50,000).  We will be at the Marytown Athletic Field, a hub of social activity throughout my youth in the 70’s, the place where I played softball for several grade school years;  the site of the annual 4th of July Picnic and the place where I spent many shy hours wanting to be outgoing and goof around more with the other kids but instead quietly sitting and watching and waiting.  Not sure yet what I was waiting for…

I have been gone a long time.  I left home for college right after my 18th birthday and never returned for a summer.  My parents moved to a lake house a couple years later, so even the too-brief trips back to visit family did not take me back. I expect that the memories will be intense, when I drive back into town and set foot back on the dusty parking lot.  It has been rebuilt into a very nice ballfield and park, which must mean it is still a hub of community fun and activity.

So, there I will be, with the scholar and the muse, the cowboy’s weekend whereabouts still unknown.  There will surely be many other characters from my past.  I meant to dig out the old yearbooks to refresh my memory on the names and faces.  Then I reminded myself that there will not be a quiz so I don’t need to study.  Nametags will suffice.  Enough time has gone by to blur the faces from what they were, and soften any craggy memories of youthful high school angst.

(I hope!)

be free

17 Friday Apr 2009

Posted by in something important, I'm sure

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Our old sport net/soccer goal/baseball backstop thingy is on its way to a new home.  It is old, worn, and sure not pretty;  we received it second hand from a friend five years ago.  But it still has some life in it, some usefulness to someone, so it will not fill our landfill – yet.

I forget who first told me about freecycle,  but after a quick check online, I found a local chapter.  Freecycle.org is based on the mission “…to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.”

Currently, “The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,721 groups with 6,591,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people). Membership is free.”  I can say from experience, signing up is very simple.

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Before I became freecycle-ated, I would struggle with how to get rid of our unneeded stuff.  Sell it? Donate it? Tax write-off?  Selling sounded good ($$$) — besides, how hard could it be?  It seemed everywhere I looked, people were selling their little treasures on ebay, or craig’s list, and making tidy little sums from their unwanted items.  Turns out that selling requires sequential action steps (identify item, photograph it, upload, write listing, follow-up calls, etc. etc.)  For a procrastinator, this translated into piles of stuff sitting around for a looooong time.
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Consignment shops were the next avenue.  I would go through effort to clean, press, and hang items, drive them to the store, and then be told by some young thing with her thong showing that my clothing wasn’t “what they needed at this time”.  I’d save items from season to season, trying different consignment shops — (I have a marketing background so really, how HARD could this BE?) It became a game, a challenge — surely if I take THIS item, they will accept it.  It’s NEW WITH THE TAGS STILL ON.  But no.  Their full frontal rejection of my stuff left me feeling kinda… rejected.
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Garage sales?  Don’t get me started.  I know people who make $500-800 at their garage sales, so really HOW HARD COULD IT BE???  We tried a few times.  Usually it rains.  By participating in a neighborhood yard sale extravaganza, we had our best sale ever, hauling in $35.10.  Unfortunately I had become distracted by something shiny up the street and spent $40.00 at their sale;  …well, you do the math.
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It is better to give than to receive…

Turns out it is really true.  We give to charities that will come pick up at our door.  We take loads to Goodwill trucks and to our local shelters.  I’m not looking for any pats on the back;  I think most people give goods to charities, and we had too along the way. Boxes and bags and loads of stuff no one wanted.
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But purposefully giving away the things that in my mind could/should/would be sold — this was my epiphany.  This felt good in a whole different way, a personal way.  Enter Freecycle, stage left.  No matter what the item, someone will end up wanting it.  Broken old VCR with no remote?  No problem.  I posted it on Freecycle; someone was there within 8 hours to pick it up, shake my hand with a heartfelt thank-you and say his brother-in-law is a whiz with old electronics and thank you very much, we can really use this for my wife to do yoga tapes in the basement where the kids won’t laugh at her.    Certainly now, more than ever, there are plenty of people that can use what we no longer need or want.  We used to joke about the “garbage fairies” that would drive around the affluent neighborhoods, night or day, and pick up items off the trash piles on garbage day.  I used to feel superior, really downright snobby about these early recyclers — now I see that they were, in a way, recycling before it was cool.
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One man’s trash is truly another man’s treasure + reduce, reuse, recycle. = warm fuzzies.  I give in.