The Southwest Voice

By: Louise Cooper

Recently, in my second grade classroom, I had an occasion to view actions that reflected a practice common in the larger community. It was nearly the end of the school day and it was time to pick up scraps of paper and debris from under and around desks. This is what I saw: several children had taken the cardboard lids from their large flat crayon boxes and were fanning them about under their desks to blow their trash into someone else’s space. At that point more lids came out and it was a dusty mess as trash blew about from one space to another. I was astonished and admonished them to pick up their own trash and stop trying to blow it elsewhere. I felt sad for the kids who had picked up their trash and were now picking up that of their classmates.

After school when I had a few moments to reflect, I realized that they were only doing what they had seen adults do on a regular basis: blow debris from their yards and walkways into the street or even worse, into someone else’s yard. What has happened to those wide rakes and sweepers? It doesn’t take that long to dispose of the offending trash, leaves, etc. in our trash cans. It’s more permanent and cleaner.

Here in the Southwest I see many of us working folk out on Saturday mornings for a run or a power walk, only to get dust blown into our faces. We all know that our air does not need added particulate matter, especially with the possibility of Valley Fever and the high percentage of our community with asthma and allergies. Oh, come on Southwest Bakersfield, let’s be an example to the rest of our town and to our youth. Let’s take care of our own trash and not blow it about.

Yearning for a cleaner and greener community,