Notes From My Knapsack 10-22-06
Jeff Gill

Making Room Amid the Clutter

As the weather gets fouler, the Little Guy spends more time indoors, and his stuff spends more time on the living room floor.
This works well enough until we decide we want to, oh, walk across the room or find the carpet. Then the cry goes out from the sofa, "Time to tidy!" Books, papers, small toys, atlases, pencil boxes, household objects used for non-intended purposes, the stray ibex or emu: they all have to go into their proper folder, closet, or shelf space.
Over time, the cumulative weight of school handouts, church fliers, and Star Wars figurines threatens to crack the foundation, shift Earth’s gravitational field, or at least crowd we the humans out of the house. Which is not true, of course. Too much stuff, maybe, but a little of Tidy Time ™ and the house is cleared for strolling, or at least pacing.
In the same sense, there’s been a variety of odd reactions to the Tuesday observance-celebration-hysteria over the United States hitting 300,000,000. I learned in school 220,000,000, have been used to writing in stuff like, oh, columns, that our nation has 260,000,000 souls, but we’ll all mentally adjust to a nice handy round 300 million and use it for years, even if the National Population Clock says 314,268,752 when we type it next.
300,000,000 is a large and quite frankly unimaginable number; by the same token, India has 1 billion plus another set of 300 million and China continues to dwarf us both (note to self: learn Mandarin). Depending on where you drive, you may feel that you share the road with a major portion of that population explosion, or see the houses going up for most of them.
We do live in Licking County in one of Ohio’s few growth zones, and while growth is a double-edged sword, the fact of the matter is that many of Ohio’s problems have less to do with Emily Kreider’s non-payment of student loans (and shame on her, but still) or whether Mike DeWine occasionally sends out form letters to constituent inquiries, contrary to the current crop o’ ads, but to the fact that our state is shrinking. Population, youth, jobs, locally owned pharmacies – all shrinking.
Which is why I’ll be voting for our local open space purchase levy, and for the Licking County Parks. Before the accessible, non-agricultural, recreationally and environmentally inviting space is all snapped up, we need to give our public servants, of which we have many good ones in this county (along with a few, very few, dunderheads), the latitude and resources to purchase some well placed parcels.
Especially to my conservative friends I would say: This is not one of the areas we let the free market run unfettered. No private interest really wants to provide free, general public green space, but it is a public need and the common good. Plus, we vote for these and the use of eminent domain is pushed to the far margins of public policy where it belongs.
Licking County has a cost-effective park system with a priority on families and wise use of natural resources; they hope to be empowered to enter the market while some tracts in the western half of the county can still be selected to maintain natural areas, recreational use in helpful locations, and keep our area looking and feeling like a good place to live. Townships like Licking, Union, and Granville (to name ones I keep up with, but by no means all) have trustees and employees who are trying their best to balance a healthy environment and citizens’ interest.
There are no boondoggles for the powerful and well-placed here, and our community has quite a few people who use their wealth to advance this agenda as well. But gifts of land and cash here and there can’t replace a secure funding source.
As for school levies, let’s talk about that next week, but green space and open land purchases are a public service we can and should empower.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him about your favorite hike or stroll in Licking County at knapsack77@gmail.com.