Picking up speed for community meeting

Lou Marzeles
News Editor     

     It's still three weeks away, but heavy, inert objects-like unified community effort-take a lot of energy and time to get moving, so I'm firing an opening volley of support for the Sept. 30 community meeting about the area's future (see this week's Java Talk column).
     Think of that meeting as the follow-up to the big day-long meeting of April 25 this year, when the American Legion hall was packed to its gills with people interested in what officials from the American Planning Association had to say about Goldendale's future. That meeting had an enormous impact in and of itself, though no action committees were formed. Out of that meeting came the indelible notion that Goldendale is not a gateway to some other (and, by implication, much more interesting) place. Rather, it is a destination unto itself. Pretty soon we'll see signs along the Columbia announcing, "The Gorge-Gateway to Goldendale."
     OK, so that's not likely, but it should not be inconceivable to think of Goldendale as a place that people would actually want to make their way to. A few hundred people made their way here this past weekend to watch other people hurtle down hills at absurd speeds. People come here to watch other people shoot balloons from horseback, evaluate cattle and swine, to join other people gazing into space and pondering the timeless questions of existence. Not least of which is why people hurtle down hills at absurd speeds, but they and their viewers seem to like it, and they like doing it in Goldendale.
     To work the metaphor even more, it's time to get community rolling downhill, to get speed picking up, and to watch where it goes.