Sign Manners

I probably should have applied earlier in life to become whoever is the actual Emily Post nowadays. I have ideas about manners in every aspect of life, I’m afraid, and it’s no accident that I ended up teaching medical ethics for years. Today’s manners discussion includes a good new/bad news focus as well as a good acts leading to bad acts (like the border lane jumping behaviors): excellent and responsible behavior from some members of the community which not only contrasts with but also gives rise to problematic behavior from some other members of the local community.

This month, the people who had taken on the reconstruction of the Community Events Sign got the sign board itself up. There is yet a roof to be built, but within the first few days of the signboard itself being up, there were any number of useful signs posted on the board. Good work, good response, good deal. It took awhile, but that is behind us.

The P.R. Quilt Group is participating in the Art Walk that is going to be held on B.C. Weekend. We’ve done this for several years. The Arts Foundation does an Arts and Music Festival on Saturday and Sunday and then there is the Art Walk on Monday. This involves a number of artists setting up workshops where people can come and look at various art projects and also actually participate in some aspect of that project. So, the quilters have a small quilt show, e.g., and then they also do a hands-on fabric collage project for people who come and want to try it.

Because the Art Walk is in a couple of weeks, the quilt group wanted to put a poster on the Community Events board that would specifically announce the quilt show. We wanted to do this because most of the Art Walk activities are on Gulf St. down toward the beach near the Blue Heron and the Maple Studio, whereas the Quilt Group’s activities are farther up Gulf at the Community Center and people who come down to those activities don’t necessarily know that there is another activity a ways up the street.

Thus, we made a poster and carefully taped it up to the Community Events signboard. Simple, basic information, black and red text against a light background, easily readable from a car driving by. Looked good. There were two or three other signs up there and we just set ours in adjacent to them. HOWEVER, a few days later, I drove by and noticed that the events sign situation had changed a good deal. Someone had put up a very large poster for the Arts and Music Festival which dominated most of the signboard and was artfully arranged so that it had a lot of blank space around it. In the process, they had taken the Quilters’ sign down, torn it in the process, and jabbed a thumbtack in it, locating it so that it was partially obscuring another sign. The Festival’s large poster was put up in such a way as to partially obscure yet another sign.

What is the lesson here, people? It’s a Community Sign Board. Nobody’s monitoring it or establishing and enforcing carefully designed rules. So use some sense. Nobody’s sign is more important than anybody else’s sign. Use the space efficiently. It may sometimes be necessary to move signs in order to put up new ones, but it is never good manners to use more space than you need or to obscure other peoples’ signs that were there before you came to put yours up. (Note: the picture was taken a few days later when two more signs had been added at the bottom.)

If you want a different opinion, check with a different Emily Post.

Addendum: The signboard has taken a long time to get done and has turned out to cost more than the Community Association contemplated back at the beginning—just to get the sign up with a roof is going to cost in the range of $1,500, I think. Raising money has been difficult, but this week the kids in the P.R. summer camp got together a bake sale and carwash and raised over $500. Now, that’s a community contribution to be celebrated.