A Somewhat Better Point?

Recently, I implicitly (or perhaps explicitly, depending upon your level of sensitivity) chastised those who want to introduce new entities that will make this a somewhat better Point Roberts on the grounds that new things are likely to make it worse. However, I have spent the last few days trying to imagine things that might make it better without making it worse.

In 1975-76, I lived on Yap (a 25-square-mile Pacific island in the general vicinity of Guam and The Marianas Islands—a training program for living on the Point). I would always make a point of discussing with the Yapese who had been shipped off to the U.S. to obtain M.A.’s in city planning and were now returning to an island with no city and even less planning what they thought of the U.S. They liked it to a person, they were fully infected with freedom and democracy, although they were not all that enthusiastic about giving up the class system on their island that relegated the Outer Islanders to toilet cleaner status and did not permit their heads ever to be higher than a main island Yapese (thus effectively eliminating access to 2-story huts for the Outer Islanders who regularly came in for medical care and boat repair).

On the other hand, they were truly puzzled by the American fondness for their lawns and their lawn mowers. They did not understand why Americans even had lawns, first of all: what was the point? But beyond that, all those lawn mowers? One for each lawn when they were rarely used more than once a week? “Couldn’t they,” they would ask me, “share?” ”Apparently not,” was my reply.

From the Yapese, however, I bring two ideas for Point Roberts. One would be a community wood chipper that would be available to everyone who needed to dispose of the abundant tree trimmings brought to us by the winter wind storms. Surely it would be foolish, as the Yapese observed about lawn mowers, for everyone to have a chipper. And because everyone doesn’t, I suspect most people are burning their wood trimmings. Thus, a community chipper would be our small contribution not to increase carbon in the atmosphere each spring and fall. I haven’t worked out the details for this, but then that’s not my job. It does seem to me that this would benefit lots of Point residents in several ways (no burning to muck up even the close atmosphere, let alone the higher one) and lots of chipped wood to spread around all the gardens and property edges. It would be attractive, efficient, and low in cost (although not free, probably). And I can’t think of anything it would lead to. Feel free to tell me, though.

The second idea comes, sort of, from sending all those Yapese to the U.S. to learn city planning in the hopes they would I don’t know what. Their second career choice in the U.S. was anthropology which at least they could practice on their family members. But, the idea is education/certification, of a specific sort, sponsored by the Point itself.

What we need here is not city planners or anthropologists. What we need here is a plumber to take up the considerable demand that our one plumber, who already retired once, cannot meet. The contractors, I assume, have their own outside plumbers, or maybe they are the ones who are monopolizing our sole local plumber. He is a kind and decent man, but he is unlikely to return your phone call, in my experience as well as that of several friends.

So, here’s the deal. We could go three ways: (1) sponsor a local Canadian plumber to get a green card so he could live north of the border and work south of the border. Unfortunately (information here for those who do not live on the border), NAFTA has made the flow of goods excellent, but not the flow of workers. No Canadian without a green card can work in Point Roberts. Indeed, the folk wisdom here is that Canadian cottagers are not permitted to help you, say, rebuild your fence, even as a volunteer, as a neighborly gesture of good will because, I guess, that Canadian cottager is depriving some able-bodied U.S. worker from being paid to do the job, even though the able-bodied worker isn’t here and nobody is getting or ever will be getting paid.

(2) We could find some as-yet unmotivated, local 18-year-old and offer to finance his (or her) training in plumbing school. In exchange, he would agree to work in Point Roberts as a plumber for, say, 3 years, or repay the Point for his educational costs if he decides to move on instead.

(3) We could advertise for a plumber in the ROTUS and offer to give him free rent for X number of years while he builds up his plumbing practice here. Again, he would have to work for the residents, not the contractors, or else he would have to give up his free rent.

It’s hard to imagine that one more plumber on the Point would lead to an influx of plumbers, or of electricians, or indeed anything. And as the population ages, we are finding that the old folks who know how to repair everything around the house, are getting less willing to crawl down into the 12” crawl spaces that are such a feature of the houses here. And the generation behind them? They never knew how to do that stuff in the first place, is my impression.

So there you go: two ideas for change without blowback. I think.