Digging out paths

 I was listening to NPR today in the car briefly and caught a snippet of a piece about the Congressional Cemetary in DC. I knew part of this story  - a cemetary for Congress which has been being restored over the past few years. But a new part of the story to me was about the Dog Walkers.

Apparently folks from the neighborhood would walk their dogs in the cemetary but things became so bad that the dogs who drank out of the clogged drainage ditches would become sick. So after getting angrier and angrier the man being interviewed, I think Patrick Crowley, decided that he was going to stop pointing fingers and fix the problem - so he dug out the paths. Then bit by bit he asked the other folks who walked their dogs to help him and from a barren waste the land has been returned to a respectable resting place. The website is here.

It is a great story and I liked the way he told it - he admitted that he spent a long time looking for some one to get mad at, and to fix it but ultimately was willing to step in and make a difference. Of course that land belongs to someone, and it happens to be an Episcopal someone, but the upkeep of 33 or 34 acres in the center of DC at a time when Capitol Hill was undergoing some major urban upheaval was crippling. Even if there was a finger to point, there was no point pointing it because there was a will but there was not a way - and so Mr. Crowley and his associates became the way.

I suspect there are a lot more things like that out there - yes, sure, it probably is someone's job but that someone needs help and for good reason. We tend to be very good at pointing fingers and offering distant blame but I hope we are just as good at getting out our shovels and digging out the paths, at working alongside as well as offering an opinion.