Beyond civic duties, you could participate in doing some kind of active good, which might lead you to becoming a member of the church or the Food Bank group, or the Prep group, the last of which is dedicated to getting us through a disaster. In fact, if we had a real disaster. we might require the services of the food bank and the church as well. PAWS membership would enable you to help out with unexpected dog and cat needs: lostness, foundness, illness, maternityness, and orphanhood, especially.
The Historical Society and The Friends of the Library are a little harder to classify, because they seem sort of civic, but also sort of do-good, with a dollope of hobby on the side. If they have legal status, they are surely not-for-profit, anyway.
And then there are the activities groups, which might also be described as 'interest groups,' if the phrase had not been entirely taken over by politics. The Garden Club, the Beekeepers, the Rose Society, the church choir, the Sustainability Group (which may or may not overlap with the inventors group), the community garden participants (which might overlap with the sustainability people), the book clubs, the knitting group, the horse association, somebody's poker group, and the quilting group. Doubtless more, but these are the ones I know about. Really, quite a lot for a place with only 1500 permanent residents.
It is, of course, the quilting group that I belong to, and it has managed a continuous existence now for about fourteen or fifteen years. At its peak, it has about 14 members, but this number waxes and wanes with the seasons. It is a group with a strong presence on the Point. Over the years, we have made and donated a lot of quilts for community events or projects, or places. Our quilts can be seen in the Community Center, the Library, and the Aydon Wellness Clinic. At the Lutheran Church, there are four of our quilts on the walls of the great hall, "The Four Seasons of Point Roberts." Last week, the church raffled off another of our quilts in order to raise money for a generator to help save us in a disaster. The quilters aren't the only people I know on the Point, but they are all good friends in the truest sense of the words. Couldn't get along without them.
Maybe all this group joining is a function of the age of Point Roberts residents. It is largely composed of older people, of retirees, who come here and need to find some kind of niche to begin their new life. Back in Los Angeles, or wherever, they already had a life whose boxes were already filled and one would hardly be looking for yet more boxes to fill. And maybe it has something to do with the isolation that is such an essential quality of Point Roberts. Whatever the cause, it is another good feature of the Point. Here we are, like the pieces of a quilt, all separate, all different, and all together.
