This was one of those. You'll get a bit of an idea if you skim through these pages and look for "Sept. 24." I haven't counted how many times that date appears, but I know it's a lot. Starting that morning and going on more or less concurrently, the Westside had the following:
- Coronado Parade and Pancake Breakfast.
- Fire Station 3 Eagle Scout/flagpole dedication
- Powwow at Rock Ledge Ranch.
- Great Parks Festival in Bear Creek Park.
- Two programs by the Old Colorado City Library.
- A Bijou School fundraiser car wash.
Feeling that each of these activities had intrinsic importance to the Westside, we actually sat down and worked out a deployment strategy to cover as many of them as we could. When your staff consists of two (maybe three at times people), that can be a little interesting. It also requires me to point out that there are times when my wife and co-publisher Therese - whose "normal" tasks involve working with businesses, designing great-looking ads and keeping our books straight - gets called in for photographic duty. We decided long ago on this paper to forego individual bylines, but anyway now you know. She also shot the current photo of Jim Clamp in the column to the right. Not a bad likeness, I'd say. I also can't forget my older son Travers, who cares most deeply about the inner workings of computers but lets himself be "recruited" now and then. This also happened during the Pro Cycling Prologue in August, when the three of us stationed ourselves with cameras on different parts of the course. And both he and Therese keep cameras with them at all times, just in case they see something interesting.
So now you know about our deployment, but how to explain that "intrinsic importance" thing? Well, OK, that might take a while, but the common denominator, which we've long espoused here, is volunteers. People giving of their time to things they care about were key to each of the above-listed events. They were trying to brighten their little part of the world, and in the process they were brightening ours.
- K.J.