CommUnity Walk in Moscow, Idaho 2007

I submitted this letter to the editor on April 30, 2007 to the Moscow–Pullman Daily News. I think they printed it soon after.

     CommUnity Walk Day in Moscow April 28 was a delight. I hope it was the first of countless years of an annual CommUnity Walk Day.
     The event – with politicians' speeches and young folks' essays praising the ideal of community, a walk, and feasting and live music in a park -- was in the ages-old tradition of town festivals to celebrate the end of winter and the coming of the season of first flowers, of tree buds and baby leaves, and of the planting of the crops. It seems fitting to sandwich May Day between CommUnity Walk and Renaissance Fair weekends.
     I've known other towns that have annual festivals whose origins no one remembers. One in Illinois had Jubilee Days, with an outdoor craft fair and an antique car parade. Another in Michigan had Food Fest, in which the town's restaurants set up booths in a city park and bands played bluegrass in the bandstand. Each of those special days started long ago, probably as the dream of one person, then of a few, then of many, and developed from dream to event to annual tradition.
     The manifest universe, including human society, is naturally contradictory. "We should change slower!" "We should change faster!" "It's us against them!" "We're OK; they're OK!" "Labor is a commodity!" "A laborer is a human being!" "Deregulate!" "Regulate!" "Hurray for the old ways!" "Hurray for the new ways!" "I'm average; you're odd!" "Wrong! I'm average; you're odd!" Such disagreements form the warp and woof of our civic lives. And it all happens within community. As Jesus taught, we're all neighbors.
     Democracy involves awareness that, among humans, a) dynamic contradictions are natural and b) happen within community. It's good to set aside a day to celebrate our common humanity and this, our community.

          Brian Leekley
          Moscow, Idaho