Hometown In Crisis

Boy oh boy, did my hometown ever get a black eyes recently. To give you a sense of perspective, I should first tell you where I’m at. I lived far enough away from Little Falls long enough to have seen communities that function more effectively in general because credence is given to the fact that children are active and require proactive consideration. My graduating class was one of the largest ever in Little Falls. The schools were revamped and updated to accommodate the large influx of baby-boomers and the closures of religious schools in the area. Shortly after, the community needed to decide whether or not to build a community center, assumably to divert the activities of youth toward more positive activities. The community turned down the idea. What the kids had to do than and now remains the same. There is still no community center, the local library is quaint, but now as then, limited in size and scope, the roller rink was in existence 2 years in the late 70’s and never was again, the outdoor movie theatre and adjunct watering hole called A&W is long gone too. If a child cannot afford to participate in extraneous other school and after school activities, what IS there for them to do? What there is to do is just what happened recently. Two teenagers got in trouble and were shot multiple times and died for it, shot by an adult member of the community. And if things go as they usually do in Little Falls, lots of the townsfolk will be pointing fingers at either the teenagers who were said to be trespassing, or the adult who professes to have been defending himself when perhaps the global view of the situation from an outsider might suggest that building a community center and being more concerned and proactive about the situation might be just the remedy required to prevent more black eyes and dead people. So I’m again suggesting it would be a proactive thing to build and staff a big community center and other activities for all of the community. Maybe some of the unoccupied facilities such as St. Francis could be revamped and put to use this way. But what do I know? I’m “one of those” artistic humanitarian visionary types who scares people with direct ideas like this, and did not fit into the restraints of that town and that is why I am not there now. It’s all conjecture, and the courts will decide this difficult issue, but the old hometown sure seems to be on a downhill slide that could be overcome with the fortitude of a more mature stance not unlike the town of Staples, which built a community center and vo-tech out of care and consideration, along with disposing of the guns and especially the mental concept that guns and force and are ever necessary in the training of youth, if we love our youth as we claim. I propose that to NOT do something about it at this point will exacerbate a problem which has happened too many times already and has been going on for far too long. To this artist, I see a picture of a town full of black eyes. Congratulations on being tough and unmoving; (actually I disagree that tough is ever an appropriate mode of behavior). Let's ask Yoko how they are stopping the harms in her metropolis of New York.