Small beginnings mean a lot

A wise artist once made a cynical comment about what matters to people. He said, “Everyone’s an expert on potting sheds.”

He was referring to the excitement people felt about apparently simple and unimportant matters at a municipal meeting, while they ignored things like budgets where millions of dollars were being spent with unanimous “Aye’s.”

As the years go by, and we cover more and more stories, it seems that the man was right, but it’s not a bad thing.

Anyone who has ever worked at a newspaper will tell you that little, heart warming or outrageous stories attract more attention than big old international stories.

That’s just like saying, “Everyone’s an expert on potting sheds” with the implied, “but not about big buildings or big cities.”

Last week the readers of the Daily Local News were outraged to read that two dogs had been shot, but not so concerned that scores of people were being shot in our ongoing war in the Middle East.

This week in the Avon Grove Sun, there are at least three stores about little things -- the ice cream shop, the generator raffle and the barn.

They may be little stories on an international scale, but to the people who are involved and who could possibly be involved in the future, they are big.

To a family that finally finds the time for everyone to get together, piling into the car and enjoying ice cream cones together could be an outing they remember with fondness for many months.

The raffling off of one generator may not seem like a big story, but it can be meaningful to anyone who has ever lost power in their home.

David Gomez of Colora, Md., just over the Pennsylvania line, is raffling off a generator that he has possession of because someone decided not to buy it after it had been ordered.

In a generous and wise gesture, Mr. Gomez decided to sell raffle tickets and give the proceeds to Wounded Warriors project after the generator was paid for.

It’s only one generator, and the contribution is likely to be around $1, 000. But that generator is going to mean a lot to the person who wins, and the dollars given to Wounded Warriors can likely provide physical or psychological aid to one or more soldiers with post traumatic stress syndrome.

It’s not going to transform the total veteran population, but that small gesture is going to mean a lot.

Additionally, Mr. Gomez said if this project works, he just might come up with another raffle project for charity in the future.

Find out how that works out when they draw the ticket at the Oxford Farmers’ Market on April 27 at 2 p.m.

Finally, there is the concern that some residents in Franklin Township have about the demolition of a historic barn.

There’s no doubt that there are plenty of barns in this world, and losing one is not going to make much difference.

But this group that is trying to save it has an intense concern about history. The leader of the group, Dolores Hughes, said it has connections to some residents of the Township who have been around for a long time.

For them, saving that one barn is an important gesture --more than all the big stuff going on in the world.

So as spring awakens the seeds in the earth that will grow into large plants and flowers over the summer, we commend the workers and volunteers who deal the small ideas and projects, hoping that they will grow and knowing that they can be understood in their infancy.