Welcome to the CLG blogosphere

Here at CLG we hope to encourage local Colorado communities to promote awareness of the local issues and concerns of those who live in this awesome state.

Having seen the world change so much over my short lifetime and now the parent of 2 beautiful daughters has caused me to reflect on some of the simpler times of my childhood. Not quite the Mayberry scene, but I do remember going to shop for our family wares at a variety of local proprietorships. We had the local butcher, bakery, 5+10, local autoparts shop, back when you could still work on your own car, as well as my favorite, the local hardware store. These were places where you could always ask a question about the products you were looking to buy and get a friendly and informative answer in return. As I said as a kid my favorite was the old hardware store with the patient clerks who would always make time to answer all my kid questions to the best of their knowledge, always with a smile and some laughs.

We knew all of our neighbors, their families and even their pets names. We would gather to celebrate just about any holiday. We would have big neighborhood BBQ's for Memorial day and Labor day to kick off and end the summer fun. The 4th of July was always a big block party where the kids were free to roam anywhere in the neighborhood and parents never worried. The older kids always looked out for the smaller ones and everyone took care of each other as they would themselves. This type of behavior seemed to extend the boundaries of our neighborhood too.

I can remember getting a flat tire on my bicycle and walking it to the local hardware store to ask for help. And guess what would happen? The local proprietor would make time to help the kid fix a flat. Not only was it free but the local hardware guy would take the time to teach you how to fix it yourself so that next time you could make the repair on your own. The beginnings of self reliance.

So now in the days of busy schedules and shaky economic times where people are finding it more difficult to find the time to even take a lunch break at work. How do you make time to to think about a community?

Well i'm no professor of Sociology, but I do remember hearing as a child "you get out what you put in"
So what does this mean?

I'm starting to make sense of this as I grow older. You can't expect your neighborhood/community to provide for all of your needs with out putting a little effort in to the community.

So you can't complain that local proprietors are over priced when you shop big box stores for all of your wares. The big box stores are bad for the community! Your hard earned money goes to fuel some out of the community needs instead of your local ones.

I can remember the heartbreak felt when a bigbox store came to town and put most local proprietors out of business. It was tragic to see how fast a community that has survived several world wars and all of the tough economic times be decimated in less than a year and to be replaced with a bunch of strangers who came from somewhere else to take our money. The 3rd generation family hardware store went belly up in 12 months. And the old shopping district went bust.

So how can we try and reverse the damage that has been done to local communities? Get involved!
How you may ask?

Well i'm thinking a good start is by looking at the things that concern you the most and seeing what you can do to change them.

I heard on the radio yest. that 1 in 8 people can't afford to feed their families. I quickly ran down my mental list of friends to make sure that non of them looked like they belonged on a UNICEF poster. I think they all seemed OK. But how do you really know without in some way potentially offending someone?

A strong community knows!
A strong community knows when it's members need help. Think back to more primal times where people lived small tribes. It was obvious who needed help putting food on the fire. It was the person who was an unsuccessful hunter. It was quickly apparent that this person needed food and had trouble providing for themselves. The tribe would help out by sharing their food with the unsuccessful hunter because communities rely on strength in numbers to survive. Then a natural progression kicked in, Generalized reciprocity. The member who could not be successful as a hunter had another valuable trait he/she was able to contribute to the community. They figured out how to build a canoe which enabled the hunters to travel farther and get their game home quicker for better quality food.

So by the tribes support of the unsuccessfully hunter they actually enabled a new technology which would in turn make the community far more successful overall.

So it is here in todays increasingly less personal world that that there is an urgent need to communitize!

We can no longer hope that the government at any level really cares about the individual. It's the communities that really get their attention!

This is the necessity for which Colorado Loves Green has been created.