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A fond look back to August warmth....monarch on cosmos.
Following my resignation from my statewide volunteer group, the ad hoc chairman also resigned, which basically put the existence of the group in jeopardy. I had not expected her to follow suit. My intent was not to leave them in the lurch, but it had become clear to me many months ago this group was dead in the water and no one seemed to care.
If I had to define what the problem was, I would have to say it was a lack of strong leadership, someone who was willing to put fellow board members on the spot, ask them to step up to the plate and help out. Cus it is a lot of work. The woman who chaired our group when I joined a few years ago was a sweet, wonderful human being, but she did not know how to delegate to others; instead, she just wund up doing everything herself, and others let that happen becus it was easy for them to do that. Eventually, she burned out and resigned.
The other person on the board who volunteered to temporarily act as chairman until a permanent chair could be found did the best she could, I think, but there's still way too much for just one or two people to manage. So she just dropped off and didn't bother to resign (until I did), nor did she communicate with anyone when she failed to call meetings for the past 4 or 5 months now! Eventually, I just became disillusioned and disgusted with the apathy of some of the people on the board, whose involvement, even to just attend a remote meeting, was spotty at best; we often lacked a quorum.
When I voiced my concerns to another board member (our treasurer, who I recruited about a year ago), he said he would pick up chairing the meetings for as long as necessary. He did chair exactly 1 meeting, but then...nothing. I don't fault him becus he works f/t at a pretty senior level job and never sought to be chair.
At this point, I felt it was better to formally step down, cut ties and move on to more productive volunteer activities. However, there are a few housekeeping activities I need to perform for them, like posting all prior recorded meeting minutes on shared Google docs. I may need to attend one more final meeting, just to record minutes.
In the meantime, I organized a "flash" litter cleanup in my own hometown. I had 2 people (and a rescue dog) show up, and that was enough for this one road. I posted pix on the town's FB group and so far have 161 emoji positive expressions of support and 28 comments from people who say they want to participate next time. The owner of the local hardware store has also made an offer to donate trash bags, which I will take him up on once I use up my own stash of bags I can no longer use at our town landfill due to a new system that accepts only town-issued blue bags.
So there has been huge support for what I'm doing, as there was the two prior times I organized cleanups in my hometown of the interstate rest area. Far fewer people actually show up to help! That's okay. It's a process, and it takes time for any new group/pursuit to take hold. I have mixed feelings about turning this into anything more than a loose coalition of residents who do periodic litter cleanups. I am still concerned about the risks involved, and my own liability, of having groups of people walking along a road distracted by picking up litter. So the road we did this weekend led to just one place: the town transfer station (ironic, huh?) and I chose to do it on a Sunday, when the transfer station is closed, so there was no traffic on the road that could affect volunteers' safety.
But there's only so many other places like that. Town parks are really pretty clean around here; a lot of trash seems to come from motorists who toss things out the window as they're driving or sit partying/drinking/eating/having sex in a parked car. Any woodsy areas fronting roads attract lots of trash. I do have 2 roads in mind for next time that I believe are low-traffic, but I need to do a drive-by and see if there's enough trash to warrant a cleanup and assess traffic. Otherwise, I don't think it should be our responsibility to pick up trash on private property, whether residential or commercial.
November 19th, 2025 at 11:10 am 1763550611
On the other hand, that’s a very pretty picture of a monarch butterfly.