President’s Message
“People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.” -George Eliot, Middlemarch
In any neighborhood we can find a healthy diversity of opinion about anything and everything, and that’s likely to be particularly true about our responses to COVID-19, which has gotten so many people sick (including a member of my own immediate family) and has caused so many deaths (including two of my high school classmates). Thus you may think Oregon’s and our nation’s management of this unprecedented pandemic is terrific or terrible or some combination of the two—no matter. In our neighborhood, we can still act in ways that are neighborly.
For me, that means recognizing that this coronavirus is still active, that there is much we don’t yet know about it and its variants, and that we have people in our community who still might be potentially vulnerable, among them the immunocompromised, those who can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons, and young children. Though both the infection and death rates are happily way down and the situation may change dramatically in the span of time between when I’m writing this and you’re reading it, I’d still ask you to act in prudent ways for the sake of your neighbors.
To me, this mostly means staying informed and staying kind. If the situation calls for wearing a mask and keeping socially distanced, that could be a gift to a neighbor. When vaccinations reach the 70 percent level in Oregon (if they haven’t by the time this hits your doorstep), our elected officials will lift restrictions, and we were able to get closer to “back to normal”—a gift to us all.
That said, none of us wants inadvertently to cause anyone else to become sick, so for the time being BWNA will continue holding our meetings via Zoom and will continue postponing many of our traditional community events. When it’s clearly safe to get together by our state and local health officials’ metrics, we will. And we can hardly wait until the day we can greet you in person.
Meanwhile, what has been most inspiring to me in the midst of this pandemic is the bravery, creativity, and energy of so many volunteers who have figured out ways to help others while still staying safe. Some examples: on the heels of their recent masked and socially distanced planting parties and the securing of a grant from the Portland Garden Club, our Friends of Wilshire Park committee is now starting to raise funds to further improve that jewel at the center of Beaumont-Wilshire. Our Transportation Committee is regularly talking to the city about ways to remediate traffic problems on Skidmore and Shaver streets and other streets that drivers are using to cut through our neighborhoods. We have active partnerships with the Beaumont Middle School principal and PTA and are working together to organize safe clean-up parties at the school and a possible Red Cross blood drive in August. We have secured an additional grant to support food and care kits distributed by the Community Cycling Center to neighbors in need. We have just made a connection with Portland Clean Air to support that nonprofit group’s efforts to make our city environment healthier for all.
Perhaps most remarkable of all, we have been able to continue producing this newsletter that you hold in your hands or are viewing in color on the BWNA website (www.bwnapdx.org) to keep you informed on all these initiatives and opportunities. The newsletter is delivered to 2,600 homes and businesses in Beaumont-Wilshire, an endeavor that requires the critical work of over 60 volunteers who deliver it to your door handle or welcome mat. (The USPS frowns on us putting them in your mailbox.) I hope to mention the names of all those helpful folks in a subsequent column, but for now, when you see a volunteer delivering the BWNA newsletter, give them a thankful shout-out…in appreciation from one neighbor to another.