01 Mar President’s Message, February 2015
I’d like to follow up on something I said in my last message… making this village a more special place than it already is. Increasingly I hear: “They should…”, “Why don’t they…”, “They need to…” and similar comments starting with ‘They’. The ‘they’ invariably means someone other than whoever is talking and therein lies a problem.
Fearrington presents its residents with various amenities, clubs and organizations. At the philosophical heart of all of these is the spirit of volunteerism. An obvious recent example is the Directory (a repository of untold reams of information…check it out) you just received. With the exception of the printer and FEDEX, every aspect of it resulted from the work of an unpaid volunteer from the people who gathered, formatted or edited the information, to those who made sure it was delivered to your door.
Unfortunately, this spirit seems to be fading. As our volunteers leave their positions it is becoming harder and harder to find replacements. When ‘they’ are gone, who will provide the amenities that brought us here? Why can’t it be ‘you’?
But (My English teacher would die knowing I started with a conjunction.) ‘they’ are not only the volunteers. They are also the people who speed, who don’t recognize stop signs, who walk on the road the wrong way (or the right way), who fail to pick up after their dogs, or who leave their trash next to bins, or…. ‘They’ are never ‘us’.
The bottom line, in my mind at least, is that in order for Fearrington to continue to be special and become even more so, it is important to realize that we are part of this community. It needs ‘us’ to function and ‘we’ must remember that what we do or don’t do can affect those around us; sometimes in very dramatic ways.
Jay Emmer, FHA President