No Good Deed Goes Unpunished or Unappreciated or Something

There's been a move to get the community involved in cleaning up Baker Field (the area adjacent to the primary school here on the Point) and some considerable progress with what can be done by volunteer labor workdays.  The field lies under the jurisdiction of the Parks Board but what with its need to use its limited funds to get the Community Center's immediate problems (ceiling leaks, water pooling under the foundation)  under control, there's little actual dollars left over to work on Baker Field.  Thus the turn to volunteer work.

All that good work has now paid off with more people actual going to and using the area in some way because it is more inviting.  Alas, we are greeted this morning by a note from the primary school on Point Interface with the news that the expanded use has resulted in things both dangerous and not very pleasant being left about for the school children to experience when they use the Field.

Maybe we need to have a national self-governance day where we talk about the importance of responsibility for our own daily actions and their consequences.  I'm all for a social safety net, but people, all people--school kids to grownups to old people, ought to be able at a minimum to clean up after themselves.  Maybe it means keeping a trash bag in your car; maybe it means finding the trash receptacles around; maybe it involves taking things to the transfer station; mostly it involves remembering to do it.  I don't know what the pragmatic problem might be, but we need to be thinking more consciously about the basic rules of living together, especially in such a tiny place as this where we ought to be able to get it right.